


Little Things

by Acai



Category: haikyuu
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Anxiety, Bad Puns, Blackouts, Community Service Projects, Crushes, Detention AU, Domestic Fluff, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Falling In Love, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Gardens, Getting Together, Getting to Know Each Other, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Abuse, M/M, Matsuhanaiwaoi, Multi, Mutual Pining, Narcolepsy, OT4, Panic Attacks, Polyamory, Senior year, Service Projects, Slice of Life, Smoking, Storms, Team Bonding, Texting, cliche tropes, non-binary kenma, oikawa's a giant nerd
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-11
Updated: 2016-10-28
Packaged: 2018-08-14 13:41:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 22,436
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8016208
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Acai/pseuds/Acai
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Of all the plans that Iwaizumi had made for his senior year, working on a service project with three strangers from detention was never one of them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. September 21st-September 22nd

**Author's Note:**

> I plan on this having fourteen chapters, but that may increase or decrease depending on how the story gets written. Updates won't be incredibly fast, but they'll be consistent and I'll work on them when I have time outside of school. Prompts always help, so feel free to send any ideas to @aobajosighs on Tumblr. Thank you~.  
> || Username was previously H0mestuck ||

**~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ P r o l o g u e ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~**

**_June 30th_ **

Iwaizumi hadn’t even known that it was possible to see the city from up there, but there they were and there was the city. It was weird being able to see it without hearing any of the noise that should have been emitting from it. He could see the masses of people on the sidewalks and the streets, and as far as he could see the city stretched on with hundreds of lights to keep it glowing. It was prettier from where they were, without all the noise and the smell of pollution. There wasn’t anything particularly funny about it, but he heard laughter from next to him nonetheless.

“This is gonna be how we die,” Matsukawa informed them over the sound of Oikawa’s laughter.

“We’ll be fine.” Hanamaki clambered up the last clump of rocks to stand next to Iwaizumi.

“We’re going to _die,_ ” Matsukawa mumbled mournfully, seeming content to just stay where he was.

Oikawa regarded the rocks that Hanamaki had just climbed over and seemed to decide that they looked stable enough. He made his way up the mound, allowing Hanamaki to grab his hand and pull him up the rest of the way. “I can’t believe you actually let me talk you into this.” 

He sat down rather than standing next to the two of them, but if it was because the climb up had made his knee hurt then he didn’t say so. Three pairs of eyes turned to the boy still standing below them and he squinted right back at them, crossing his arms.

“I didn’t work that hard for months to die climbing a mountain.”

“This is barely even a hill, Mattsun-chan. Besides, you’ve gotta be up here so I can give you my spiel.” Oikawa tossed him a look of faux innocence. Matsukawa eyed them all dubiously before uncrossing his arms and sighing heavily. He managed to climb up the rest of the way with more ease than the rest of them, despite his certainty that he was going to die doing so.

He sat down next to Oikawa, though he sat much further away from the edge. Oikawa took what he could get, nodding once and turning his eyes back to the city and the darkening skyline.

“Are you going to rant? Should I start tuning you out now?” Iwaizumi kept his eyes on the view in front of them. Oikawa scoffed from where he was sitting.

“No. I was just going to say that this is it,” he sounded calm for once in his life, all traces of smugness or teasing gone from his voice for the time being.

“This is what?” Hanamaki asked, tearing his gaze away to look at the other boy.

“A better memory,” Oikawa replied simply, eyes shifting to meet Iwaizumi’s when he glanced over. “I don’t want you to remember today for the bad things. So…remember it for this, instead.”

“For breaking and entering?”

“For climbing up a mountain and sitting on somebody’s flowers?”

Oikawa threw a wad of squashed lilies at Matsukawa. “And for walking miles just to climb up a _hill_ and for burning those papers and for being somebody new.” He paused, breaking his eye contact with Iwaizumi. “And for saying goodbye the right way. Not in that sappy way that everybody hates.”

Iwaizumi watched Hanamaki put his jacket on the ground and sit down next to the two of them, mumbling, “the right way,” like he was mulling over what that was supposed to mean. For all of his complex metaphors and deep thoughts, though, Oikawa _was_ right about one of those things. The boys sitting in front of Iwaizumi now were completely different people than the ones who he met at the beginning of the year.

Maybe they were the same people, though. It wasn’t like they’d successfully grown as people or changed their lifestyles, they hadn’t participated in a life-changing events that had let them grow as people. Maybe they were the same people, with the same dumb jokes and the same deep thoughts. The only difference was that Iwaizumi could see them now. He could see everything that they put out on display for the world to see, but he could see everything that they wished nobody could see, too.  

Iwaizumi joined them, listening to Oikawa’s full-blown ranting and not caring if he sat in dirt. He tuned out Oikawa’s speech and turned his gaze back to the skyline to catch the last bits of the sunset and pretend like the moment wouldn’t end. When it ended, though—because it would end—they would have one last thing to do before the night was over.  

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

**~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ C h a p t e r  O n e ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~**

**_September 21st_  
**

For the record, Iwaizumi hadn’t done anything wrong. Had he punched a boy in the face so hard that the boy had begun to nosebleed all over himself? Yes. But did Iwaizumi do anything wrong? _No,_ because the boy definitely had it coming. But was the _boy_ in detention? No.

 _For the record,_ Iwaizumi had never received a detention in his life. He didn’t have perfect grades, but he’d only ever missed a handful of days of school, and he’d _never_ had a detention. Until September 21st, the date written in a messy scrawl on the top of the pink slip that would probably be the reason that Iwaizumi wouldn’t get accepted into a college.

Iwaizumi had tried to explain that yes, the boy had deserved it. He’d even tried to explain that the boy deserved it because _he’d_ punched half the people in the school before.

Somehow, it still ended with Iwaizumi sliding open the door to the detention room and the boy walking out of the building to go home like nothing had happened.

The inside of the room, which was just a regular math room, had rows of desks that were only occupied by two or three other boys. There was only three rows of desks, though, which meant he’d have to pick one of them to possibly aggravate.

Because the boy in the back looked high as heaven and the boy in the front was glaring absolute daggers at him, Iwaizumi chose the boy in the middle. Mostly because said boy was already asleep, somehow, judging by the slow rise and fall of his chest.

Iwaizumi glared right back at the kid in the front row, unsure of why he was the one getting glared at. After all, that boy was at least _partially_ responsible for getting Iwaizumi stuck here in the first place. The stranger really shouldn’t have been practically foaming at the mouth just because Iwaizumi had appeared in the same room as him. Iwaizumi glared right back.

“ _Don’t_ fight my fights for me,” the angry kid hissed at him, hands clenching around the chair. “I can manage _just_ fine.”

He didn’t scream ‘angry’ to Iwaizumi. But right now, Iwaizumi wasn’t going to mess with him. He didn’t want to be the one with the bloody nose.

“I never said you couldn’t,” Iwaizumi snapped, dropping his bag onto the ground by his desk and sitting down just as angrily.

The angry kid inhaled and exhaled slowly, still seething, and Iwaizumi wondered if that was a technique he’d learned at anger management. “If you don’t want another detention on your permanent record, I’d suggest leaving it alone next time. Wouldn’t want to turn a perfect student bad, after all.”

He said it with such snark and distaste towards Iwaizumi's (previously) clean record that he just huffed at him, glad when the angry kid spun back around in his chair as the door slid open once again. The professor stalked into the room, dropping a book onto the desk and picking up a clipboard.

Iwaizumi Hajime was stuck in a room with a druggie, a delinquent and a slacker, probably all of whom would either force him to buy drugs or wouldn’t hesitate to skin him. It really wasn’t how he’d pictured his Friday afternoon going.

A piece of paper was set in front of Iwaizumi, and a pencil is placed next to it with the same heavy irritation. Iwaizumi wondered if detention teachers got a choice, or if this poor man was stuck here all the time. This definitely wasn’t new to him--he’d said Matsukawa’s name with such a thick dullness that Iwaizumi could tell he’d been there _plenty_ of times before.

The man managed to slam a pencil onto a desk loudly enough that the boy sitting closest to Iwaizumi woke up. Iwaizumi was pretty sure that they’d had literature together last year, and the boy had slept through all of that too. Maybe he would sleep through his whole life. He’d wake up one day as an eighty-year-old man and he’d wonder, _what did I do with my life?_ The boy, Matsukawa, had the decency to wait until the teacher moved on to the next row before he put his head back on his desk.

Iwaizumi watched the math teacher weave his way to the back, setting the paper down from a distance as if he were sure that the boy would bite him if he got too close. Maybe he would--Iwaizumi wouldn’t be surprised. Every school had a druggie, and everybody at their school knew that Oikawa Tooru was that druggie. Technically nobody had ever _seen_ Oikawa doing drugs, but he got caught smoking behind the bleachers often enough that everybody just assumed. He must have stared for too long, because Oikawa’s eyes locked onto Iwaizumi’s, curling his features into innocence. Lips curled softly into something resembling a smile while his eyebrows bent down and managed to make the look menacing at the same time. From his looks alone, Oikawa had a lot of potential; even with the lip piercing and undercut that turned his look rebellious and punk, he managed to look good. Iwaizumi flicked his eyes away.

The math teacher returned to the front, beginning a long-winded explanation of what they were expected to do. Iwaizumi stopped listening after _essay explaining why_ and chose instead to stare at his desk as if it really was interesting in some sort of way. It smelled like Clorox Wipes and graphite, but it was still more interesting than the overweight man at the front and less intimidating than the strangers on every side of him.

He stopped talking eventually, sitting down in his chair with a loud huff and picking up his book. It looked like a Christian book on How To Raise Kids In A Godly Fashion. Iwaizumi was fairly sure his own mother had read those books before eventually giving up. Perhaps Iwaizumi would have turned out more nicely if she’d kept it up.

He picked up his pencil, beginning to write his name before pausing. Not only was nobody else even making any kind of move towards their pencils, but the teacher seemed to not _really_ care if they wrote something or not. He put his pencil back down. The worst that could happen at this point was another detention, and Iwaizumi’s life was already screwed over with just one. (Or maybe he was exaggerating a little bit. It didn’t _feel_ like an exaggeration, though.)

Yawning widely, Iwaizumi put his bunched-up hoodie on his desk, placing his head on it and staring blankly at the wall. Only forty minutes to go.

The wall remained his source of interest until the door slid open again and the detention monitors took their switch, leaving a perky woman in place of the lifeless math teacher. Iwaizumi would have preferred the math teacher. The woman, who beamed at them as if they’d never done wrong in their lives, was his history teacher. She placed her hands on the desk, still grinning like this was a fun new activity. Maybe it was, to her.

“Good afternoon,” she greeted them. “Suzuki-san explained to me that you were given an assignment. How’s that going?” She didn’t receive a reply, but powered on undeterred. “Well, I never much liked papers myself in school. It’s a must, though. It’s the paper or community service, take your pick!” She laughed after this, eyebrows raising and eyes lighting up. She really did find joy in this. Matsukawa’s head raised slightly from his desk, mouth barely hanging open while his own eyebrows furrowed in confusion. Kobayashi-san must not have taken this role often.

She spoke a while longer, rambling on like the first detention monitor. Iwaizumi didn’t tune her out, fretting that she’d make them repeat what she’d said the same way that she seemed to like to do in history class. When she trailed up and down the aisles, looking at their blank papers. Iwaizumi’s half-written name was the most on any of the papers, but her grin didn’t falter when she returned to the front of the room. She picked up the stack of papers that she’d brought with her, and Mastukawa’s head returned to his desk. This was apparently the part where she went back to rambling. Iwaizumi suppressed another yawn. Twenty minutes to go.

A stapled pack of papers landed on the angry kid’s desk and Iwaizumi watched him scan it over. His eyes ran over it at least four times before he turned to look back at Kobayashi-san, eyebrows furrowed even harder than Matsukawa’s had been earlier. Iwaizumi picked up the stapled packet when it landed on his own desk, eyes skimming it once. He read it over again, watching Matsukawa sit up completely when he read it. Oikawa squinted at the paper in the same nonbelieving way.

“No,” he said, looking up.

“Yes,” Kobayashi-san replied, flipping to the first page of her own packet. “I did say it was an essay or a community project, didn’t I? You’ve been to a detention nearly every day this year—but there’s not a _single_ essay that’s been written. A community project, on the other hand, is a hands-on approach that’ll do good for you _and_ our town.” Her perky tone has reprimand in it now, in the sort of way that’s dripping with snark and seems to say, _I bet you wish you’d just done your essay._

And oh did Iwaizumi wish he’d written that essay.

 _Your Community Garden—how to help people_ and _the environment in 18 simple steps!_ The stapled packet mocked him with a photo of a mass of students gathered around a newly planted tree, looking too proud of themselves for their own good. Matsukawa groaned and slammed his head back onto his desk as if he could concussion himself out of this.

“You can’t force us to do this,” the angry kid argued, putting the packet down onto his desk with finality.

Kobayashi-san hummed in response, skimming over page two. “I can if I say that this is now a project that’s required in order for you to graduate.”

“Not if I don’t want to graduate,” the angry kid snapped, sinking down into his chair. It was an obvious lie, and the history teacher didn’t bother with a reply. Instead, she instructed them to turn to page three. Iwaizumi didn’t turn to page three.

“I’ve never had a detention before,” he protested, dropping his own packet onto his desk. “I’m _not_ going to repeat my senior year because of this.”

“You won’t if you do an adequate job on the project.” Kobayashi-san flipped the page again, answering in an uncaring voice. “We don’t take violence lightly.”

Iwaizumi could have answered with a million replies, but instead chose the safe route of snapping his mouth shut. Oikawa mumbled _goody-goody_ from behind him, and Iwaizumi was five seconds away from giving the druggie the next bloody nose.

In a matter of twenty four hours, Iwaizumi had punched a kid so hard that he bled all over himself, had been issued his first detention, and had become tasked with building a community garden with three of the school’s worst delinquents and drug-addicts with the consequence of repeating senior year should he fail. If that wasn’t enough to make his head spin, Iwaizumi didn’t know what could.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Iwaizumi was instructed to come back the next day at the same time, and even though the teacher chose to reassure him that nothing else would be put on his permanent record as long as he completed the project, Iwaizumi would rather have had another detention. Iwaizumi shoved the stapled packet into his backpack, glaring right back at the angry kid when they reached the door at the same time. Iwaizumi watched the angry kid practically curl his lip when Iwaizumi slid the door open and walked out first.

He shoved his fists into his pockets, continuing to glare at the ground while he walked outside. The angry kid went in the complete opposite direction right away and Iwaizumi couldn’t have been more glad. Matsukawa, who’d only woken up in time to leave, trailed after him at a slower pace, probably so that they wouldn’t have to walk near each other.

Iwaizumi didn’t have as much luck with Oikawa, who walked in the same direction as him without the same decency as Matsukawa.

They ended up getting on the same train, sitting as far apart as they possibly could. Oikawa rummaged through his bag and pulled out earbuds, playing his music loudly enough through them that Iwaizumi could hear it from the other side of the otherwise-empty train car. He didn’t give Oikawa the satisfaction of glaring at him, choosing instead to turn on his own phone.

_One Missed Message_

**Message From:** _Kuroo_

**Subject:**

_Am I missing out on a lot in detention?? Should I sock a kid next?_

**Message To:** _Kuroo_

_No. I have to go back tomorrow to do a community service project._

**Message From:** _Kuroo_

_What kind of project? You can finish most of them in like an hour. But if you REALLY like it, you can punch him again and go back._

**Message To:** _Kuroo_

_Shut up. And it’s a garden or something. To “build teamwork skills” and “help the community._

**Message From:** _Kuroo_

_Oh! I think I know what you’re talking about—like one of those gardens that you put in a basement. Then somebody grows them year-round and they give the food they grow to like, charity causes. That’ll suck ass to make._

**Message To:** _Kuroo_

_You’re going to get blocked._

**Message From:** _Kuroo_

_You wouldn’t!!!!!!!!!!!!! You’d be lost without me._

**Message To:** _Kuroo_

_I would be just fine._

The wall pressed into Iwaizumi’s back when the train slowed and the doors opened with their usual puff of air. Oikawa, closer to the door, got off first. Iwaizumi waited as long as he could before he followed. Iwaizumi stayed on the other side of the street, walking on the right sidewalk and ignoring Oikawa while he walked on the left.

Unwilling to continue texting Kuroo, Iwaizumi pretended to be completely absorbed in his phone while he walked. He could still faintly hear Oikawa’s horrible music choice from here. A glance up determined that the boy had an unlit cigarette in his mouth and was typing on his phone, like he was texting someone. Maybe he was just pretending in the same way as Iwaizumi, though.

Iwaizumi continued waiting for Oikawa to turn away, but the only time that he turned was onto the same street as Iwaizumi turned onto. He squinted at the other boy, narrowing his eyes further when Oikawa gave him a suspicious side-eye. They walked, still, on opposite sides of the street. Iwaizumi was willing to call it a coincidence up until the point where they walked into the same neighborhood. And to the same road.

Iwaizumi stopped walking at the same moment as Oikawa, and their eyes met as they both stopped at houses on opposite sides of the street. Neither of them made any move, waiting to watch the other. Iwaizumi turned away, marching up the steps of his house and unlocking the door. He stood in the open doorway, making angry eye contact with the boy on the other side of the street, who was standing in his own open doorway.

And to think, his mother had called the family across the street nice. And to _think—_ Iwaizumi lived across the street from the infamous Oikawa Tooru. He’d never debated drinking bleach before that day, but it suddenly sounded like an insanely nice idea.

Iwaizumi pulled the stapled packer back out of his bag, reading it over. It was what Kuroo had said it was, just a garden that they’d have to build to grow food for charity organizations. It would take a hell of a lot of time, though. Iwaizumi was pretty sure they’d barely finish in time for graduation—and that was _if_ he could get a team of drug-addicted delinquents to actually do the project. When Iwaizumi had punched a kid in the face, he hadn’t though it would be the reason that he failed his senior year.

Iwaizumi refused to repeat the grade, though. If they didn’t manage to finish the project in time he would just be a stripper. That would make more money than what he wanted to do, anyway. Maybe this was a sign or a blessing. It was some deity telling him, _hey, you’re actually destined to be a sex worker! Don’t go to college!_

Iwaizumi really hoped that wasn’t it.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Iwaizumi had somehow managed to never leave the house in the morning at the same time as Oikawa. He knew, because he’d never had the faintest idea who lived across the street until yesterday. Somehow, they managed to leave at the same time that morning. Iwaizumi’s door opened just when Oikawa’s did, and he didn’t hesitate to slam it back shut again. Telling his mother he forget to grab his homework assignment, he scurried back up to his room and waited for Oikawa to get far enough away before he went back out.

Iwaizumi had never hated anyone truly and completely, but he truly hated Oikawa Tooru with a passion.

He walked into first period wishing he’d gotten a deadly flu overnight. He dropped his bag onto the floor, not caring about the loud sound that came from doing so. Yahaba turned around in front of him, raising his eyebrows.

“Bad day already? It’s not even eight,” he teased, tapping his pencil on the back of his chair. His eyes lit up like he’d remembered something and he turned around the rest of the way. “Did you hear about the kid who just transferred here? Everyone says he got expelled from his last school or something. I mean, they’re also saying he bit somebody’s finger off, but…I _do_ think that he got expelled. Have you _seen_ him?”

“No? I didn’t even know there was a new kid,” Iwaizumi pulled out his chair and sat down. Yahaba always managed to hear everything days before Iwaizumi did. Maybe that was why he was getting forced to ‘improve his social skills’.

Yahaba waved it off. “Today’s his first day. I think he’s in my history class—if I show up tomorrow with nine fingers, you know why!”

“There was tons of rumors last year when Kindaichi moved here,” Iwaizumi reminded him, pulling a notebook out of his bag. “And none of those were true.”

“Yeah, but you haven’t _seen_ this kid. Trust me, you’ll know what I’m talking about when you see him.” Yahaba quieted as the teacher walked into the room. “And anyway, there was rumors about that Hanamaki kid, too, and those were right.”

“Hanamaki? That’s probably just another kid you’re making up.”

Yahaba feigned an insulted look. “I’m not making it up! Seriously, there was this kid who moved here, Hanamaki. He’s in detention like, every day, I think. Cause of fights and stuff. And what did people say about him? That he moved here ‘cause he got in fights all the time at his old school.”

“Stop gossiping with everyone,” Iwaizumi mumbled, ignoring Yabaha when his comment got waved off again. The third kid in detention must have been Hanamaki. Though, Hanamaki hadn’t been there because of a fight.

Whether or not Yahaba was right or not about the new kid, Iwaizumi just hoped he wouldn’t have to have detention with _four_ other people. He would rather have had to do an entire community service project alone.

Their teacher called the class together and Yahaba turned back around. Iwaizumi supposed he’d find out if the rumors were true or not sooner or later; their grade barely surpassed one hundred and fifty students. If there was somebody new, Iwaizumi would see them in the hallway. He would decide then if he looked like the kind of kid to bite somebody’s finger off.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Iwaizumi skipped lunch, going instead to try and talk to the counsellor. He knocked on the door to his office, sliding the door open when he heard the permission granted.

“Mizoguchi-san—,”

“If this is about the service project, then my answer is no.” The school counsellor sat up straighter in his chair. Iwaizumi bit his tongue to keep himself from arguing, letting the teacher continue. “We don’t take violence lightly. I am aware of the situation which landed you in detention, but my answer is still no. There was…other ways to handle it, even if you did have good intentions.”

“But I’ve never had a detention in my _life,_ ” Iwaizumi tried to reason, aware that he sounded just like the goody-goody that Oikawa had goaded yesterday. He powered on anyway. “I don’t think it deserves an equal punishment to the others.”

The counsellor didn’t even pause before replying. “Your reasoning is that you are a better behaved student than the other three?”

“Well,” Iwaizumi paused hesitantly. “Yeah, I guess.”

“Then that’s exactly my point. What do you think would happen if we sent three students who have shown they don’t care about class to finish a project? They wouldn’t do it.” The counsellor leaned back in his chair, speaking airily as if it weren’t a big deal. “With a responsible student with them, they’re more likely to learn a thing or two.”

Iwaizumi stared back at the counsellor blankly.

“Is that a good enough answer for you, Iwaizumi-san?” Mizoguchi-san looked uninteresting, making it clear that Iwaizumi wouldn’t be getting out of the community service project. Iwaizumi frowned, but nodded in reply. The bell for fifth period rang and Iwaizumi bowed briefly, mumbling a thank you, and left the office. He shifted his bag on his shoulder while he walked up the stairs, debating if it would be worth it to even try and ask again. He could make a list of reasonable points on why it was a stupid idea to make him spend his next months working with delinquents just because they couldn’t do what they were told.

A hand grabbed his arm and Iwaizumi turned around to see a slightly panicked-looking Yahaba. He bounced on his toes like it was helping him to get his anxiety out.

“What—?”

“It’s the _new kid_ ,” Yahaba hissed, pulling Iwaizumi to the side of the hall so that they could talk. “We have history together, you know? And we got partnered for a project. What am I supposed to do now?”

Iwaizumi raised an eyebrow, shaking Yahaba’s hand off his sleeve. “Have you actually talked to him yet? You’ve still got all ten fingers, I’m assuming the rumors were false.”

“That’s not the problem!” Yahaba’s voice sounded despairing and he chose to dramatically wail his words.

“Then what do you want from me?!” Iwaizumi shot him a look, trying to convey the fact that he definitely wasn’t in the mood for this right now.

“The _problem,_ ” Yahaba replied, looking back at Iwaizumi just as sternly. “Is that he’s _cute._ ”

“Wait—what?” He furrowed his eyebrows, squinting at his friend. “You were just telling me in first period that this kid is a serial killer, and now you think he’s cute?”

Yahaba shot him a glare, shushing him. “Yes! That was before I spent half an hour working on a project with him and _realized_ that he’s cute. But what is he is a serial killer?”

“Then I hope I’m his next victim,” Iwaizumi replied flatly, turning and continuing to walk to his class. He ignored Yahaba’s whining from next to him. If the kid was really as creepy as Yahaba had made him out to be that morning, then his friend would get over his puppy love in a couple of days. At least, Iwaizumi hoped that was the case. He would probably jump off the roof if his only sane friend went psycho for a psychopath.

Yahaba let out a long puff of air from next to Iwaizumi, grabbing his sleeve again and yanking him to a halt. Yahaba pointed across the hallway, looking like he was trying to be subtle about his pointing.

“There! That’s him! Doesn’t he look like someone who’d bite your finger off?”

Iwaizumi followed Yahaba’s finger to a boy standing across the hall, looking like he was glowering at everyone else. He definitely did give off that kind of impression, and Iwaizumi could tell why the rumors had begun. He squinted at his friend again. “Weren’t you just confessing your undying love for him?”

“I did not!” Yahaba hissed, giving Iwaizumi’s sleeve a sharp tug. “I just said that he’s cute. And he is. But it’s his _personality_ that’s cute, not his face.”

Iwaizumi scoffed, giving the new kid one last glance before continuing down the hall. “His personality?”

Yahaba seemed to give up, shrugging at Iwaizumi when they stopped to part for their next classes. “Looks like we’re both screwed,” he said grimly before he turned down the hall to his literature class.

Iwaizumi watched him walk for a second, shooting one more glance at the kid down the hall. He was still just glaring at everyone, but Iwaizumi thought that maybe that was just how his face looked. Either way, he’d heard an awful lot about him from Yahaba. Both of which seemed a little far-fetched.

Even if he did bite off people’s fingers, Iwaizumi would rather that than history class with Matsukawa and the teacher who’d singlehandedly been the cause of his whole problem.

Iwaizumi slid open the door to the classroom, using every ounce of strength in his body to not glance at the seat towards the front where Matsukawa sat. He failed, looking towards the other boy. Even if he sat at nearly the very front of the room, he looked like he was already asleep.

Iwaizumi was pretty sure that, with the way that Matsukawa seemed to sleep through his classes, he was probably going to repeat his senior year either way. He halfheartedly chided himself for being so mean, sliding into his own desk and pulling out his notebook. Matsukawa slept on and the history teacher smiled at him from the front of the room like he’d done him a favor.

For the record, she’d done no such thing.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

When the end of the day came, Iwaizumi wanted nothing more than to go home and forget about this whole mess. He would have let the new kid (dubbed “Mad Dog-chan) bite off one of his fingers if it meant he didn’t have to go back to that stuffy detention room with the three boys who’s named flitted around the school in rumors about drugs and fights and scandals. He’d had _plans_ for his senior year, and doing a service project with three strangers who he’d met in detention was never one of them. Not to mention, he had a pretty good feeling that he’d be the one putting the work into the dumb project anyway. He’d work like they slept, smoked and picked fights with strangers. Wasn’t that how it went in movies about these kinds of things?

Or maybe he’d get recruited into their gangs. His life would become one on the run from the cops, spray-painting gang logos on brick walls and trying to get high off of paper and Smarties.

Iwaizumi frowned when he slid open the door to the detention room. Matsukawa slept on, Oikawa sat in the back of the room with his dumb undercut and dumb lip piercings and drew on a desk with an Expo marker, Hanamaki eyed Iwaizumi warily from right in the middle. Once again, Iwaizumi made the safest bet with the sleeping kid, sliding into a desk in the front row by the windows. He pretended like there was something on his phone that was more interesting than the kid death glaring him from the middle of the room and refused to acknowledge the professor when the door slid open again and she greeted them all cheerily.

“It’s nice to see you all again. This is going to be a fun project, don’t you think?”

For the record, it was not going to be a fun project.


	2. September 23th-September 30th

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Humans are like puzzles, but Iwaizumi's starting to think that perhaps some people are missing so many pieces they can't possibly be pieced together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My laptop is still completely broken, so I borrowed one of my S/O's laptops to write. I'm posting a day early this week, but updates will usually be on Sundays. Follow me on Tumblr, @aobajosighs, or follow the tag 'matsuhanaiwaoi detention au' to be notified if there's a change in plans or to be told if a chapter is posted early or late. This chapter is kinda slow, I apologize. It picks up in chapter three, so bear with me for now~.

**~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~**

**~ ~ ~ ~ ~ C h a p t e r T w o ~ ~ ~ ~ ~**

**September 23** **rd** **-September 30th**

The service project was going to take place in the basement of the church a couple streets away from their school. The plan was essentially that the garden would be able to grow year-round and the food would be able to be donated to charities. The other half of the project would take place outside of the church in the muddy lot that hadn’t been used since before Iwaizumi was even born. If building a weather-proof indoor garden wasn’t difficult enough, they’d be forced to do something that plenty of people considered completely impossible. Iwaizumi liked a challenge, but that was all a bit much to take in.

Matsukawa had slept through most of the explanation of instructions, Oikawa looked ready to strangle the history teacher, and the angry kid, Hanamaki, looked like he’d lost the capacity to care about the entire situation. All in all, she probably could have given them the most menial task possible and they still wouldn’t have been able to pull it off. The history teacher seemed blissfully unaware of that fact, shooting them all another ridiculous grin and handing them printed-out ideas that she’d come up with for the project. 

“Now, there’s still things that you’ll all have to figure out on your own. Is a certain brand of soil better than another? How are you going to fit all this into the school budget? How will you use your time wisely so that you’ll be able to finish in time? But, I’ve given you all with the basics.” Her hand was resting on the edge of Iwaizumi’s desk, and he was fighting down the urge to shove it off. “You’ll all be visiting the church after I finish talking to see what you have to work with. I expect you all to work together to get a basic idea of what you’d like to do. My nephew will be there, so ask him any questions you have when you get there.”

Iwaizumi grimaced at the packet. The plan was unattainable and bothersome at best, painful and life-ruining at worst. If she wouldn’t be there to keep track of them, they would most likely accomplish absolutely nothing. Iwaizumi hadn’t even  _ accounted  _ for that possibility.

She rambled on a little while longer, jotting down several more thoughts on the chalkboard and pointing out things that none of them really cared to know. She managed to say plenty of things for a solid twenty minutes without ever really saying a single  _ helpful  _ thing.

He’d been sent off into the vast and terrifying world without anything more than an, “I’ll  _ know  _ if you go anywhere other than the church, so you best head right there.”

Matsukawa looked like he was literally about to fall asleep standing up, Oikawa’s lip piercing glinted annoyingly as the light caught it when he pouted, Hanamaki still looked completely emotionless, and Iwaizumi was absolutely certain that they were all screwed.

Nobody said anything the entire way there. The walk was silent with the exception of Oikawa’s terrible music playing through his earbuds. It was less than a mile—maybe a couple of blocks—but it felt like they walked for eons before he could even see the fence wrapping around the church. It was painted baby blue, and there were little white handprints all over it, like they’d had the children decorate it. They probably had.

The fence and front door were unlocked and Matsukawa didn’t bother announcing their arrival in any way when he pushed the door open and walked in. There was a kid their age curled up in one of the chairs, legs drawn up to their chest and long hair falling into their face. They’d bleached their hair at one point or another, but it had been so long since they’d done it that there were plenty of brown roots. They were playing a game on their phone, glancing up only for a second when they walked in before looking back at the phone.

Oikawa opened his mouth to say something, stopping when the door opened again behind them and a short boy came skidding in, grinning at them like this could have possibly been exciting in some way.

“You’re all from my aunt’s class, right? I’m here to show you around!” His excitement was genuine, and Iwaizumi wasn’t too sure how to feel about that. Was he aware that they weren’t from her class, but from detention instead? He wasn’t going to  _ correct  _ him, of course, but…

“Oi, shorty, are those doors always going to be unlocked?” Oikawa pointed towards the front doors. “Are we going to need a key or something?”

“ _ Hinata. _ And yeah, you’ll need a key, but Kenma and I will be here to let you in until you get one.”

Iwaizumi was going to take a wild guess and say that the pudding head playing the games on his phone was Kenma. They glanced up at their name, still looking dully uninterested, but didn’t bother adding anything. Hinata was probably the nephew that Kobayashi-san had mentioned. They didn’t look alike, but they definitely shared the same energy.

“Do you have anything here? Like…soil or pots or something?” Iwaizumi turned his gaze back to the redhead.

Hinata didn't answer, but fished a key out of his pocket and turned to lead them down a hallway. It wasn’t a small church, all the hallways were winding and painted with different murals. It may have been a nice place if they weren’t there for their death sentences. “You’ll be using things that are more like troughs, actually. It’ll hold fruits and vegetables better that way. The tomatoes can go in pots, though. I think we’ve just got those. You’ll be able to go out and get the rest with whatever budget the school gives you.” He turned down one more hallway, putting the key in one of the doors and jiggling the knob until it opened. The stairs to go down were completely covered in cobwebs and smelled strongly of dust.

“Dust is mostly just dead skin cells,” Oikawa informed them from behind Iwaizumi. “So you’ll be breathing that in when you go down there.”

“That great, dude, thanks for sharing.” Hanamaki’s tone made it clear that he was _not,_ in fact, thankful for Oikawa’s fun fact.

Hinata looked Iwaizumi in the eyes and grinned, wagging his eyebrows like this situation was in any way at all seductive. There was, at the very least, a light-switch that he turned on. With the lights on it just became more apparent how many cobwebs there were, but Hinata made his way down nonetheless. Hanamaki exhaled slowly before following, glaring at the cobwebs out of the corner of his eye. He seemed like a generally angry person.

Something told Iwaizumi he was wrong about that, though.

He followed Hanamaki down the steps, ignoring the feeling of the cobwebs tickling his skin as he made his way down. Their feet were noisy and the staircase felt never-ending until it did, inevitably, come to an end. The basement itself wasn’t as bad as the staircase. It was empty, but the walls and floor weren’t stone and unfinished like he’d been expecting. The floor was dark and wooden and the walls were painted a pale blue color. It was…almost nice.

There was nothing there except a single sack of dirt—covered in dust—and several plastic troughs made for planting (also covered in dust). Hinata looked at it for a second before turning back to grin at them again.

“I think basements are really creepy, so I’m gonna go back up. If you need anything, Kenma never really moves from that spot and I’ll be around here somewhere.” He looked like he was forgetting to say something for a second, then shook his head and disappeared back up the steps.

Iwaizumi was officially in a creepy church basement with three people who he didn’t know. Matsukawa sat on the floor, still looking painfully sleep-deprived.

“There’s probably dead skin cells all over the ground,” Oikawa supplied unhelpfully, seeming unbothered by it all. He picked up the bag of dirt, getting dust all over his hands and all over the air. “There’s no windows down here.”

“There’s a light, though.”

“How are we going to grow a  _ garden  _ without  _ sunlight _ ?” He clarified, shooting Hanamaki a flat look. The bag of dirt was dropped back onto the ground and more dust flew into the air. Matsukawa sneezed, and even that managed to sound tired. “There’s no time to sleep, Mattsun-chan! Our educations are on the line.”

“Don’t ever call me that again if you cherish your life.” The threat didn’t sound too dangerous, punctuated by a yawn and him shifting to rest his head in his hands, which were covered by his bunched up sleeves. He didn’t seem awfully threatening when he was wearing the baggiest sweater on the planet.  Iwaizumi was growing more and more aware of his lack of help by the second.

Iwaizumi moved to join them, pulling his own sweater sleeve down over his hand so that he could brush the dust off of one of the planters. There was a packet of old seeds inside of it, but nothing that was going to help them very much. 

“Let’s start small.” Hanamaki looked like he regretted saying anything when they all turned to look at him. “The floor is covered in dust and it’s super unorganized. We don’t exactly have anything better to do.” 

“Well, then Iwa-chan--,”

“If you keep coming up with those dumb nicknames, there’s only going to be three people leaving this basement.”

“This is a church!” Oikawa stuck out his tongue childishly. It didn’t seem like a very hardcore emo thing to do. “ Just start working on dusting things off. Maybe shortie will have dusting spray. Makki-chan and I can get all this stuff organized.”

Hanamaki seemed to have given up on getting Oikawa stop stop it with the dumb nicknames. He accepted his fate with a resigned sigh, mouth twitching down into a frown. Matsukawa, who hadn’t been assigned a job, was more likely than not fast asleep on the floor next to them. Iwaizumi wondered how anyone could sleep that much and still be tired. He’d never seen Matsukawa  _ not  _ five seconds away from falling asleep. For whatever reason, they let him sleep on. Iwaizumi, grateful to escape the creepiness of the basement, trudged up the steps. 

Hinata had disappeared again, but the pudding-headed kid was still there. They glanced up at Iwaizumi and pointed at the hallway next to them before returning to their game.

_ Some help he was.  _

The hallway was painted with little birds and flowers and rabbits. Children had sloppily signed their names around the painting in silver Sharpie. Glancing up, Iwaizumi noticed that the ceiling had been painted as well. Suns and moons and stars coated the ceiling, and their painted-on grins seemed more mockish than friendly. 

“A unique painting on every single wall and ceiling.”

Iwaizumi jumped, whirling around and glaring at Oikawa’s smirk. “Don’t you have something to be doing right now?”

“Mattsun-chan woke up, so he’s going to sort. That means  _ I’m  _ going to find shortie with you.” 

Iwaizumi made a face, and Oikawa’s grin grew larger. He pretended like he wasn’t bothered in the slightest, wandering through the corridors and trying to figure out exactly what all of those rooms were for. Oikawa filled the silence with nonsense. 

“King Louis had something similar to this done in his palace, actually. Every wall and ceiling had a unique painting on it, and they were all done by these really professional painters. It was really nice looking when it was finished, but it was a terrible idea because he bankrupted his whole country paying for it. Then again, he was never a very good king.”

“Oh my god, you’re a  _ geek, _ ” Iwaizumi pushed open a random door and walked into a service hall. “Is that actually interesting to you?”

“Actually, it is. I would have thought it would be interesting to you, too, Mr. Goody-Goody.” Oikawa scoffed, sounding offended, but he didn’t elaborate further. Iwaizumi relished the silence for a whole ten seconds before Oikawa began talking about the French Revolution. 

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~~ ~ ~ ~ ~

They found Hinata eventually. He was in a room down a series of hallways that Iwaizumi was never going to be able to find his way back through. He was working on something, but stopped when he heard the door open. Iwaizumi had forgotten what they were even there for, at that point.

“Do you have dusting spray? Or, at least, a rag?” Oikawa’s voice was chipper and light, and most definitely did not match his appearance. The more that he spoke, the more Iwaizumi found himself dwelling on that thought. For someone with such a dark appearance and reputation, he was certainly turning out to be somebody different than expected. 

Hinata did have a rag, and he led them down  _ more  _ hallways to get it. He must have spent an awful lot of time there in order to know all these rooms so easily. Iwaizumi trailed after Oikawa, frowning at his back. 

Hinata rummaged through a box, and his chatty personality went strikingly well with Oikawa’s. They talked about everything, because it seemed at first that they had nothing in common. Finally they settled on volleyball as a topic, because apparently they both played. It was all more nonsense to Iwaizumi, but they both made it sound like it was quite possibly the most important thing in their lives. Most likely, it wasn’t. If it  _ were  _ so important to Oikawa, he wouldn’t have been ruining his life (and Iwaizumi’s) by constantly getting into trouble and landing himself in detention. Somebody would have to be plain stupid to get caught in the same place doing the same thing every single day.

Oikawa didn’t play for their school’s team, probably because he’d have been kicked off faster than he could blink with his striking detention record. Maybe he would have played for the team at their school if he’d made better choices. Iwaizumi honestly didn’t understand it. If it was something that Oikawa was so passionate about, why wouldn’t he hold it over a bad lifestyle that wouldn’t give him anything? Playing for the school would mean a chance to go to nationals. It would be potential scholarships and getting credits for joining a school club. And yet…

Hinata’s head appeared out of the box once again, and he looked pleased with himself. He handed them each a rag and a can of dusting spray, readjusting his hoodie. “Kenma’s a setter, too. They play for a school team, but I think it’s mostly because their school requires everyone to join a club.” His hair was messier than before from rummaging through the box. He gave them one more grin, offering to lead them back to the basement door. 

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Matsukawa was completely awake when they got back, and he and Hanamaki had developed a system for how they worked. They’d managed to sort through a third of the stuff, stalking planters and putting the dried out bags of dirt in the corner of the room by the stairs. Other junk, like boxes of photo frames and fake flowers, would be taken upstairs and put into one of the many storage rooms. 

Oikawa and Iwaizumi split the room in half and set to work, dusting the gross floors and shelves of the little basement. For such a giant maze of a church, the basement itself was the size of one or two of their classrooms at best.

They didn’t say much, the occasional  _ can you help me move this? _ or  _ can you reach this? _ filled the painfully boring silence, but for the most part Iwaizumi wished there was at least a radio. 

Hanamaki still held a bloodthirsty grudge towards Iwaizumi, and Matsukawa and Oikawa seemed to dislike each other with a passion. Iwaizumi, however much he disliked Oikawa, would take him over the boy who was always tired. If breaking off into pairs meant they could finish the job without somebody  _ else  _ getting a nosebleed, Iwaizumi would take what he could get.

It took them the majority of the rest of their time to organize and dust the things that they could reach, and by the time they were finished Matsukawa was practically asleep once more. Iwaizumi had made his way up the steps and out of the church before Hanamaki had even finished prodding Matsukawa awake. It was pointless to try and avoid walking home with Oikawa, but he was going to cherish his few minutes of solace while he could. 

Inevitably, he did run into a smug-looking Oikawa at the train station. Once more they shared an otherwise empty train car and Oikawa’s awful music broke the silence. It was a Western band that Iwaizumi knew, and it was popular in America at the time. He didn’t have anything against it, but if it meant he could resent Oikawa more, then he would.  

The view from the window shot by quickly and blurred all the trees and people that were on the outside. Where were they all going? Were they in a mess, too? Did they know how to get out of their mess, though? Or were they stuck, trapped in a cycle of having to deal with what they’d started every single day. 

“Indoor lighting.”

Iwaizumi tore his gaze away from the window to give Oikawa a flat look. 

“Indoor lighting,” Oikawa said again. Iwaizumi noticed that the awful music had stopped. “We don’t have sunlight in the basement, but we could use light bulbs that replicate sunlight. Plants can grow indoors like that.”

“You’re a science geek, too.” Secretly Iwaizumi admitted that he was right. The right kind of florescent bulb would work well as a replacement for sunlight. 

Oikawa frowned, nose scrunching up and lips pursing. “You’ve made up your mind, don’t be a hypocrite to yourself.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” 

“It means you’ve already decided about all of us. You’ve decided that you’re, by default, better. I’m not saying you’re wrong,” Oikawa admitted. “But I am saying that you’re a hypocrite. If you’d like to think of me as a delinquent or a slacker, by all means, feel free. But stick to that.”

“I never know what you’re talking about.”

Oikawa grinned at him, easy and fake. “Nobody ever does. Must be all the smoke.”

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

If Iwaizumi had to pick a single word to describe his mother, it would be tired. Not tired like Matsukawa, sleepy and unaware and groggy after waking. Not tired in the sense of not having the motivation to get up and do anything. She was tired as if she could never get enough sleep. She was always attentive, listening when people spoke and doing what had to be done. Doing  _ so much  _ of what had to be done, because it seemed like nobody else would.

Raising a baby because nobody else would, working three jobs to support a child when nobody else would, taking on hard work projects when nobody else would, taking on responsibilities constantly and putting her all into them because nobody else would. And all of that, Iwaizumi thought, was enough to make somebody bitter. It was enough to make somebody want  _ more,  _ to want  _ better. _

And yet she never seemed to want anything more than she’d been given. She was kind, but she was finite. Surely someday that kindness would have to run out, right? People could only take so much. 

She was sitting at the kitchen table, typing on a laptop and preparing a presentation for work. The kitchen smelled like cooking food and their living room smelled like whatever new candle she was burning today. It smelled like summer, something with citrus. 

“How’d it go?” His mother looked hopeful, and he didn’t have the heart to tell her that he hated every minute of it.

“It was alright,” he replied, because it wasn’t a complete lie. “Kobayashi-san’s nephew was there, he was helpful.”

“That’s good! I’m glad it going well for you. You’ll be able to finish it by the end of the year, no problem.”

Whether they finished it by the end of the year or not, Iwaizumi was fairly sure that it was going to be a pretty large problem.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

They only had to go to the church on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. It was Thursday, and Iwaizumi was confident that meant today would be a good day. To add on to the optimism of that day, Matsukawa was absent in class. They wouldn’t have spoken anyway, but there was one less reminder to pop his fake little pretend world that none of those boys existed. 

Yahaba had talked more about ‘Mad Dog-chan’ in their first period class, and Iwaizumi wasn’t sure if it was more likely that he was a mass murderer that Yahaba talked about half the time, or the heartbreaker that was described the other half of the time. The day passed by slowly, but Iwaizumi wished it would go by even slower.

Matsukawa was gone again the next day, meaning they all had more work to do, but Iwaizumi reminded himself that the weekend was soon and it was enough to make the day tolerable. They dusted and organized the rest of the basement, then slacked off for the rest of the hours. 

Iwaizumi evaded them for another two days, but Monday did come in the end. Matsukawa, who was finally back at school, seemed less achingly-tired. He showed up to class ten minutes in and Iwaizumi suspected that he was late, but the history teacher only glanced his way and continued with the lesson. For the first time all year, Iwaizumi didn’t see Matsukawa sleeping even once in the whole history lesson. Maybe he’d just slept through all of his third period class and was subsequently awake for fourth hour. 

He was late, again, arriving to the church. Rather than by ten minutes, however, he was an hour late. Hinata had been informed of it, however, and it didn’t seem to be an issue for anyone but the three who were stuck with more work because of it. Iwaizumi didn’t bother complaining, partially because he still looked more awake than usual and partially because Oikawa was complaining enough for ten people. And, of course, that meant that Hanamaki chided him and Matsukawa sent him snarky comments in reply. The only result was bickering. 

“Such a lazy person, Mattsun-chan! Don’t you know this is a group project?” 

“Shut up.” 

“You just can’t come up with an excuse.”

“No, I really mean it, your voice is the most annoying thing I’ve ever heard.”

And on and on they bickered and bickered, not accomplishing anything at all. Iwaizumi ended up leaving the basement with the excuse of going to see the muddy lot in order to escape the noisy discourse of it. He walked out to the lot, not commenting when he heard Hanamaki follow him. For somebody who’d  _ seemed  _ eager to pick a fight, he was just turning out to be skittish and quiet. 

“How are we supposed to fix this mess?” Hanamaki’s eyes were settled on the lot where they were supposed to build the outdoor garden, but Iwaizumi wasn’t sure if that’s what he was talking about. “Nothing’s going to grow in this soil. There’s not even grass.”

“Isn’t that better? We’d have to get rid of it somehow.” Iwaizumi picked up a bucket off the ground, wondering what they were supposed to use it for.

Hanamaki made a small noise of disinterest in response, setting a tentative foot out onto the dirt. “Well, the grass would have spread at least a little after so many years. Nothing grew, though. The soil is useless. We’re all going to fail high school.”

“Be more positive,” Iwaizumi muttered, agreeing silently. 

Hanamaki was silent for a second, still tapping the dirt with his foot. Then he said, “I’m  _ positive  _ we’re going to fail.”

It was an overused joke, but Iwaizumi couldn’t help but feel less tense after he made it. Whatever bitterness Hanamaki had harbored towards him before was gone, at least for now. He stepped out onto the dirt, sure that it was alright now that Hanamaki had tested it. They kept their distance, wandering over the lot of dirt and trying to find at least a little patch that wasn’t completely useless.

There was a single flower (a weed, technically) that had sprung up right in the middle where the dirt wasn’t painfully dry. Hanamaki plucked it out of the ground, twisting it between his fingers. “I think that’s it. Just a weed.”

“A weed is better than nothing,” Iwaizumi tried, unsure of why he was suddenly trying to be the positive one.

“Nothing is better than a weed,” Hanamaki corrected. “Weeds just dry out the only good soil and kill any plants that  _ may  _ have grown there, too.”

Iwaizumi made a halfhearted noise in reply, watching the way that Hanamaki’s fingers moved around the stem, almost like it was a nervous habit to always be fidgeting. It would make sense, with the way that Hanamaki always seemed to be moving in some way. He wore earbuds all the time, like Oikawa, but he played his music softly enough that Iwaizumi couldn’t hear and he constantly fiddled with the wires like he was anxious. Maybe he was.

By the time they wandered back into the basement, Oikawa and Matsukawa’s bickering had turned into pouting on both ends. Matsukawa looked tired again and Oikawa looked frustrated, but they’d managed to at least set up the planters into neat little rows. The bag of old dirt had been dumped into one of them and given water, so it looked less dry and pathetic and more usable. They’d never been told that they needed to do a  _ good  _ job, after all, and as long as they accomplished what they needed to, Iwaizumi didn’t really care how well it was done.

Hinata and Kenma were both gone that day, so they’d been  _ trusted  _ to handle thing well on their own. They weren’t there because they were good at following rules, though, so he was sure it wouldn’t be surprising if she discovered that they’d left early. They all ended up having to walk in the same direction to the train stop, tolerating Oikawa’s obnoxious music for a lack of wanting to start another argument over something so petty. 

Matsukawa’s feet dragged when he walked and Hanamaki fidgeted with the string of his earbuds and Oikawa looked like his thoughts were five hundred miles away, and it occurred to Iwaizumi that these were the exact same people who he’d been wary of on his first day. The druggie, the delinquent and the slacker, all keeping their peace and putting forth effort towards a project they’d been given. There hadn’t been fights or smoking or drug dealing or rule breaking, with the exception of leaving early that day. People were complex. They were layered and so deep that nobody could even hope to discover themselves, much less anyone around them. Iwaizumi had a feeling that he’d at least seen through the first layers of them, though. He didn’t particularly want to know a single thing about them, but he was learning their little habits and secrets whether he wanted to or not. 

In the back of their hesitant little huddle, a conversation about a game struck up when Oikawa’s music was loud enough for Hanamaki to figure out what game he was playing. They chatted in hesitant and hushed tones, like they weren’t sure if  _ they  _ wanted to be talking, or if they wanted for anyone to overhear what it was they were saying. 

Oikawa and Iwaizumi took their train and Hanamaki and Matsukawa got on theirs, and though they didn’t say goodbye there was an awkward pause where they all must have debated doing it.

Oikawa brushed the hair out of his face while he stared down at his screen, and Iwaizumi tried his very best not to stare.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~~ ~ 

**Message From:** Unknown Number

_ What if we just fertilized the soil outside to make it useable _

**Message From:** Unknown Number

_ Its oikawa btw  _

Iwaizumi squinted down at his phone screen, sparing a glance out his window to the window across the street, dark blue curtains drawn tightly shut. 

**Message To:** Unknown Number

_ I never gave you my number. _

 

**Message From:** Unknown Number

_ No but thrs not a lto of Hajimes in hte book ;))) _

 

**Message To:** Unknown Number

_ Your typing is atrocious and you’re a stalker. Are you high? _

 

**Message From:** Unknown Number

_ No but i dont see wh y i shiould fix my typing when you know what i mean anyway _

**Message From:** Unknown Number

_ Plus its not stalking its for school  _

**Message From:** Unknown Number

_ Just answer my wuestion _

 

**Message To:** Unknown Number

_ Fine, yes, that might work. On the other hand, that’s a very big field and supplies aren’t cheap. We could just water it regularly until the soil isn’t dry anymore. Does that answer your wuestion? _

 

**Message From:** Oikawa

_ It does but thats not any fn _

**Message From:** Oikawa

_ fun*  _

**Message From:** Oikawa

_ You happy now you big old prick? _

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~~ 

Iwaizumi left at the same time as Oikawa again, but the fact that he was already fifteen minutes late meant that he couldn’t just scurry back inside this time. Iwaizumi stayed a decent length behind him, partially because he didn’t want to get a faceful of cigarette smoke and partially because he didn’t want to risk having to converse with the other boy. He didn’t think Oikawa would really want to talk to _ him  _ either, but one could never be too careful.

The train was crowded and noisy, people pushing on and off and seats filled with mothers, children and elderly. Even from the opposite side of the train car, Iwaizumi found himself trying to figure out Oikawa Tooru. It was as if somebody had placed a puzzle in front of him. It wasn’t an easy puzzle--nobody even knew if all the pieces were there. Maybe it was a full puzzle at one point, but it had been knocked off too many tables and left behind too many times. If it was missing too many pieces, there wouldn’t be any way to put it together.

Iwaizumi had a feeling that, if Oikawa  _ were  _ a puzzle, somebody had given him the wrong picture to look at. As hard as he tried to craft Oikawa into the deathly, dangerous delinquent that he’d been made out to be, he wasn’t able to. The harder he tried, the more he realized he was piecing together something completely different. 

The lip ring became less intimidating when he noted that Oikawa had a knack of messing with it, the undercut became less hardcore when Oikawa styled it so that it was more fashionable than metal, and the rumors became less valid when Oikawa lit up telling them about history. Not to mention, his curtains had aliens on them and his room was filled with books.

An entire wall, covered in shelves of books. Old, tattered books. Iwaizumi had (perhaps stalkerishly) deduced that most of the books there were the kind of things that  _ nobody  _ liked. An in English, of all things. Les Miserables, Hamilton, Jane Austen, Shakespeare, old novels from the nineteen hundreds. Something about  _ Shakespeare  _ and  _ Jane Austen  _ didn’t go together with  _ drug-addict. _

Of course, Iwaizumi was fairly sure that Oikawa’s reputation hadn’t begun without his knowledge. The more he considered the fact that you’d have to be the most dim-witted person on the planet to get caught in the same spot so many times, coupled with the fact that Oikawa was apparently very bright, it was becoming increasingly clear that he was intending to get those little pink slips. Iwaizumi couldn’t begin to fathom why.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

“Okay, hear me out,” Yahaba mumbled under his breath, and Iwaizumi swore that if he got in trouble for talking to Yahaba then he was going to throw his friend out the window. “Maybe he just has, like, a really angry face?”

“And a really angry personality. And a really angry reputation for growling at people. And a really angry--,”

“He doesn’t  _ growl, _ ” Yahaba shut up for a moment while the teacher passed them. “And he’s actually really okay when you talk to him.” 

“I don’t see how  you have a crush on that kid,” Iwaizumi muttered, scribbling down the answer for number three. “He probably did get sent here for fighting.”

Yahaba sounded personally offended when he replied. “Actually, he moved here from a couple hours away because of his dad’s  _ work. _ Why are you so mad today?” 

Iwaizumi huffed, setting down his pencil too-loudly and receiving a sharp look from their teacher. He waited for her to turn around again. “I’m not.”

“You  _ are, _ ” Yahaba peered at Iwaizumi’s paper, not even trying to pretend like he wasn’t just copying Iwaizumi’s answers. “If this is about the whole service project thing, then it’s really not that big of a deal. Maybe if you actually tried to get along with them it would be better? That one with the piercing’s kinda cute.”

“Who-- _ Oikawa _ ?” Iwaizumi made a face, shoving Yahaba away. “You’re gaying all over my desk, do your own work.” 

Yahaba laughed, receiving another irritated look from the maths teacher. They both pretended to work once again. “Yeah, him. Look, all I’m saying is if you’re going to spend most of the rest of the year with them, shouldn’t you at least try and get along with them a little? Then maybe you’d stop complaining about it to me.”

“I’ll stop complaining about it when you stop talking about your crush on Kyoutani all the time.” Iwaizumi waited for an answer for a moment, feeling victorious when he didn’t get one. 

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Iwaizumi’s shoes were soaked with water, Oikawa was lying in the grass like the manual labor was killing him, Matsukawa wasn’t even  _ there,  _ and Hanamaki was a killjoy. 

In other words, they’d watered the dried-out dirt lot, and nobody had enjoyed it. 

With the fact that Matsukawa was going to arrive an hour late every day (for reasons they hadn’t been told), they were all stuck with more work until he arrived. Tired of the cramped and dark little basement, they’d decided to start tackling the lot. They’d been given a hose and hadn’t really thought through their plan before doing it. By the time that Matsukawa did show up, Iwaizumi and Hanamaki were muddy and Oikawa looked dead. 

Matsukawa’s eyes landed on Hanamaki, scanning over him like he was trying to figure something out. His lips were pursed and Iwaizumi was waiting for him to say something snarky. Instead, he gestured towards Hanamaki’s hoodie (an atrocious looking thing with an obscure reference that Iwaizumi didn’t understand on it) and said, “nice.” 

It took exactly one word for a sly look to cross Hanamaki’s face. “Oh shit, whaddup?” 

For whatever reason, Matsukawa’s response was a tired-looking grin. Iwaizumi, still not understanding either joke, chose to leave them to their budding friendship to kick Oikawa in the side. 

“Don’t be a pain in the ass, get up and help a little.” 

“You’re not even doing anything! They’re just quoting memes like idiots,” Oikawa objected, but he sat up nonetheless. “I have a terrible suspicion that they’re going to be friends because of this, and if  _ that’s  _ the only thing they have in common, then this is going to be a horribly long year.” 

Iwaizumi glanced out of the corner of his eye at the two, who were definitely laughing like idiots about something, and shrugged in response. “It’ll be better than hating each other.” 

“Oh god, you want to be friends.”

“ _ No, _ ” Iwaizumi glared at him, like the idea itself was torturous. “But I’m not spending my senior year in a basement with three people who I hate.” 

“Hate? Such a strong word, Iwa-chan.” 

Iwaizumi made a face, shoving his hands in his pockets and walking back to the church. “Nevermind, I don’t want to have anything to do with you and your terrible nicknames.” 

 

It took exactly fifteen minutes for Oikawa to present him with a single, wadded up piece of paper. On the inside was a note written with weirdly loopy, slanted handwriting. 

_ Exposure Theory: _

_ individuals grow to like people whom they encounter or interact with on a regular basis. Research on the effect showed the strongest predictor of friendship was how closely two people lived to one another. The longer that people spend time together, the more the likelihood of friendship grows… three days a week for five months of a year is an awful lot of time to spend with somebody, don’t you think, Iwa-chan?  _

_ I’d say that gives us a fairly high chance of forming a friendship by at least halfway through the project.  _

Iwaizumi had a terrible gut feeling that that was absolutely true.

~  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for reading, and I'd love to hear what you thought of the chapter in the comments. Again, feel free to send questions, thoughts or ideas about/for the story to @aobajosighs on Tumblr, and I'll be back with more content on Sunday~.


	3. October 3rd-October 12th

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Oikawa's absent, Iwaizumi's forced to go shopping with the meme team, and a storm knocks out all the power.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am a liar and updates will not be on Sundays. My laptop is broken and I can only write when I find some way to write on a different device, so it's going to take a week or two now to get the chapters posted...all the same, I hope be able to get back into regular updates as soon as it's fixed.

**~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~**

**~ ~ ~ ~ C h a p t e r  t h r e e~ ~ ~ ~**

**October 3 rd-October 12th**

            It took Hanamaki and Matsukawa a total of three days to form what Iwaizumi was willing to call a friendship. Whether that was better or worse than hearing them bicker all the time like little kids who couldn’t figure out how to get along, he wasn’t quite sure. It was, admittedly, not the worst thing that could have ever happened. For starters, Matsukawa slept less (even though he still looked deadly tired all the time) and Hanamaki stopped acting like they were all plotting behind his back all the time (though he was still irritatingly skittish around the other two). And, seeing how they were suddenly best buddies because of a frog on a hoodie, that meant that Iwaizumi and Oikawa were stuck together for most of the next few days.

Iwaizumi honestly wished he could say that Oikawa stopped being so annoying when you got used to him, like his presence stopped giving Iwaizumi a continuous aneurism after enough time. Instead, he grew used to the annoyingness itself. He realized after a couple of days that Oikawa wasn’t actually any more annoying than any of Iwaizumi’s friends, which was both a painful and relieving realization. While Oikawa didn’t talk about his crush on the new student or antagonize him over text messages, he _did_ talk about history and space like it was interesting and he _did_ read old books that looked painfully dull to Iwaizumi.

Nonetheless, they made progress on the project. They had a total of six months left to finish the whole thing, and Iwaizumi was certain that they’d be able to do that in half a year’s time.  They’d cleaned the basement out completely, and it actually looked decent. It was still eerie without windows, but he figured it would be better when they put up the florescent lights to grow the plants. They’d continued watering the lot outside every day, plucking out the weeds and getting rid of ruined patches of dirt. Iwaizumi was sure they’d finish the project in three months, at the very least, if they didn’t have any problems—which they would most definitely have.

Their first problem occurred three days later, and it was an ironic kind of problem, seeing how Iwaizumi would have called it a blessing on their first day. Oikawa was gone from school, and that meant that he was going to be spending the day working with Hanamaki and Matsukawa. To add to the dilemma, Matsukawa didn’t even show up for an hour every day. Iwaizumi wasn’t quite sure he was ready—or willing—to spend an hour alone with a kid who blatantly disliked him. While Iwaizumi had been sure that Hanamaki wasn’t quite so distasteful to him anymore, he was proven wrong when they arrived to the church. Hanamaki was completely silent the whole time, glowering at the ground on the entire walk there.

“What are we doing today?” Iwaizumi asked, trying to ignore the icy silence for the sake of progress. Hanamaki didn’t answer, just shrugging halfheartedly and sticking his hands in his pockets. Iwaizumi tried again. “We have the budget that the school gave us, right? We could go to the store and pick up the stuff we know we need.”

“I guess,” Hanamaki answered, probably because he thought it would end the conversation faster.

The gate to the church was locked for once, but Hanamaki just slid his foot into the mesh and climbed over the top. Iwaizumi was perfectly aware of the fact that Hanamaki wasn’t going to take pity and just unlock the fence. He bounced on his feet for a second, debating whether or not he was willing to do the same.

Iwaizumi ended up climbing over the fence much less gracefully, coming near to death more than once in the process. Hanamaki had already disappeared into the church. Iwaizumi followed, stepping into the warm heating of the church. He hadn’t even noticed how cold he’d been outside until he felt the warm air, gratefully closing the door behind him to keep out the cold.

“Did Hanamaki go to the basement?” Iwaizumi glanced over at Kenma, not sure if he was actually going to get a reply. Honestly, he’d never even heard Kenma speak before.

They didn’t even bother glancing  up from their game when they nodded, pointing towards the direction of the basement as if Iwaizumi didn’t know by now. Iwaizumi didn’t bother with a thank you, walking down the string of long hallways to the oldest door in the building. The doorknob stuck was the kind that stuck when you tried to open it, making you jiggle it a couple of times before it even budged. It wasn’t the nicest establishment.

Hanamaki was on his phone and sat on the ground. He glanced up at Iwaizumi with a bored look, clicking off his phone. “We don’t have anything to do but go to the store.”

“Then that’s what we’re doing today.”

“I’m not going to the store with you. We’re waiting for Matsukawa.”

“I’ll be going either way,” Iwaizumi muttered, but didn’t argue. Louder, he said, “if you’re going to spend the next six months growling at me like I personally offended you, at least tell me why.”

Hanamaki sent him a look that was akin to a glare mixed with distaste. “Don’t fight my fights for me.”

He’d said that before, but hadn’t elaborated. Iwaizumi scowled right back. “Who said I was fighting for you?”

“ _You_ did, when you punched that kid. I can _handle_ it.” Hanamaki’s knuckles were white from how tightly he was holding his phone. “Besides, all it got you was detention. I hope you don’t expect a thanks.”

“I wasn’t doing it for _you!_ That kid’s an asshole, I would have punched him either way. I wasn’t doing it for some hero complex,” Iwaizumi shoved his hands in his pockets, feeling awkward not doing anything with them. Hanamaki wasn’t even looking at him, still glaring at the floor. “I didn’t even know you,” he insisted, pausing. “I still don’t, actually. So I didn’t do anything for you.”

Hanamaki’s glare twisted into a frown, still gripping his phone like it had wronged him. “And I don’t know you either, so maybe don’t involve yourself in things that don’t include you. That fight wasn’t any of your business.”

“It wasn’t really a fight,” Iwaizumi commented drily, forgetting that he was trying to diffuse the tension. Hanamaki puffed back up, looking ready to go back to practically snarling.

The rest of the tension drained from his body instead, his frown losing its fire and his grip on his phone loosening. “It really wasn’t,” Hanamaki agreed reluctantly. “Generally speaking, not fighting back means you won’t get detention.”

“You got detention for _that_? What for?”

Hanamaki shrugged. “I was in detention for a lot of fights, not just that. Anyway, that kid’s mom is like, in charge of employing the whole district. Nobody’s going to get him in trouble.”

“A lot of _fights,_ or a lot of whatever that was?”

“Don’t mock me, Iwaizumi-san,” Hanamaki replied, but the anger had dissipated from his voice and it sounded more like a tired joke. “You’re not wrong, though.” The silence stretched on for a long minute and Iwaizumi realized that there wasn’t anything to do until Matsukawa got there.

“Why would it be such a bad thing, even if I was doing it for you?” Iwaizumi asked eventually, breaking the silence that had settled over the room. “It’s not really a bad thing. If it was a dignity thing—,”

“It’s not a dignity thing. I just don’t want a stranger’s pity when I don’t _need_ to be pitied for anything. I don’t know you, I don’t want you thinking I’m so weak I can’t handle things. You don’t _know_ me.”

“I don’t pity you,” Iwaizumi said seriously. “I don’t even like you.”

A tiny smiled appeared on the corner of Hanamaki’s lips, which was far from the reaction that Iwaizumi was expecting. “Well, good.”

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Matsukawa took his sweet time showing up, even having the audacity to show up fifteen minutes later than usual. He looked like he was shaking off sleep, blearily rubbing at his eyes while he asked what they had to do that day. Iwaizumi didn’t miss the way that Hanamaki’s tension seemed to seep a way a little bit when his friend showed up.

The store wasn’t very far away, so they didn’t bother taking the train. Hanamaki and Matsukawa talked about a video game the whole way there, starting a heated debate between them. Iwaizumi found himself wishing that Oikawa was there—if _only_ because he wouldn’t have to handle the two of them on his own. The store was otherwise pretty empty, with maybe one or two other people milling around. Hanamaki and Matsukawa didn’t even try and be quiet; they got louder, if anything. The two wandered down the aisles to find what they needed, rather than looking at the signs that told them where everything was.

Iwaizumi kept his distance, trying his best not to be associated with them in case they started a fire. When they managed to find the planting aisle they pulled out the little list that Hanamaki and Iwaizumi had made. Iwaizumi didn’t point out the fact that they’d walked past the lightbulbs that they needed at least four times.

“What color do we need?”

“I don’t think it matters, man.”

“Oh. Well, then what color do we _want?_ ”

“What color do you like?”

“The color of your eyes, bro.”

“Bro.”

Iwaizumi picked up a stack of brown pots, putting them in the cart. “Just grab what works,” he told them flatly, wondering why he hadn’t made up an excuse to not have to go to the store with them. Hanamaki mumbled something that made Matsukawa smirk, and Iwaizumi didn’t want to know what it was.

They kept up their joking throughout the rest of the shopping trip, and Matsukawa seemed to have a knack for coming up with some of the worst puns that Iwaizumi had ever heard. He tuned them out, saying he’d grab half the list while they grabbed the other half. At some point, while Iwaizumi was grabbing the lightbulbs, there was a loud crash from the other side of the store. While he wasn’t certain, he was willing to bet quite a bit of money that it had something to do with the two of them.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Oikawa was gone again the next day, but Hinata’s little sister was there to pester them in his place. She trailed after them to the basement, introducing herself as Natsu and rummaging through the bags of things that they’d bought at the store. Because Matsukawa wasn’t there yet, Hanamaki was back to being tense and stubborn. He sat on the floor messing with his phone rather than going through the bags, and Iwaizumi didn’t have the willpower to make him actually get up and do some work. The entire week had been a hassle. Hanamaki was only agreeable when Matsukawa was there, meaning he spent an hour each day glaring at Iwaizumi like Iwaizumi was plotting against him. With Oikawa gone, there wasn’t any way that anything was going to get done in that hour. While that left time to work on assignments, they’d only have to spend more time trapped down there together.

(He used the word ‘trapped’ situationally, because the door was unlocked and they could technically leave any time they liked. And yet, they were trapped by the fact that if they left then they’d fail their senior years.)

He ended up providing entertainment for Natsu and waiting for Matsukawa to show up. Hanamaki wasn’t necessarily holding a grudge towards Iwaizumi anymore, but that definitely didn’t make him friendly, either. That said, the lack of friendliness was proving to make things difficult between the group of them. If Iwaizumi had to force himself to be buddies with them until they finished the project, he would. He really wasn’t helping his case by prying into things that didn’t involve him, which Hanamaki hated.

“So, why don’t Matsukawa and Oikawa get along?”

Hanamaki shrugged, looking irked by the question. “They’ve been in detention together longer than I’ve been there. They never liked each other. Probably cause…I don’t know, their personalities clash?”

“But they _really_ don’t like each other. And isn’t there a saying about opposites attracting or something?”

“That doesn’t mean it’s true,” Hanamaki made a face at him, like that should have been obvious. “They’ve probably got history or something. I mean, I don’t know. They’re both pretty secretive people.”

“Mm. Well, you are, too.”

“And you,” Hanamaki’s tone was defensive, like he was ready to argue, before it slipped back into its placating tone. “But it’s not like we know each other, so…I don’t see why we wouldn’t be secretive.”

“I’m not _secretive._ We’ve just never talked.”

“We’re talking right now.” Hanamaki went back to his phone, and Iwaizumi took that as the end of the conversation. He was too stubborn to do all of the work, so he leaned back against the wall and played around on his own phone until the door to the basement opened noisily and Matsukawa showed up.

“Twenty bucks Oikawa’s dead,” he said in place of greeting, taking a seat on the ground by Hanamaki.

“He was probably eaten by a whale shark,” Hanamaki agreed flatly, clicking off his phone and grabbing one of the bags.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

With the florescent lights up, the eerie basement wasn’t so eerie. It was brightly lit, and Hanamaki had googled a way to hang the lights to make it feel more open. With the claustrophobic feeling gone and the dark creepiness gone with it, the basement became tolerable. They moved the shelves to the walls, setting the planters on the top shelves so that they would get the most light. They’d picked out larger pots to grow tomatoes in, lining them up in between the shelves. Iwaizumi learned that they’d picked up several plants that you couldn’t eat for ‘aesthetic pleasure’. He chose not to start another argument, letting them set the already-grown plants on the table in the middle of the room. Iwaizumi had to admit that the room actually looked nice with everything set up.

At the rate that everything was moving, they’d be done with it in two months tops. The basement itself was already halfway finished, and while the real challenge would be the lot outside, that wouldn’t take too long.

“What are we going to do for another hour? We can’t work on the lot while it’s raining.” Matsukawa yawned widely, voice trickling off at the end of his sentence.

“It’s raining? I hate not having windows, I can’t ever tell what’s happening outside. It’s just creepy working in a basement,” Hanamaki complained, glaring up the steps as if the person to blame could hear them. “I’m still not completely convinced the school is allowed to do this.”

Iwaizumi pulled a textbook out of his bag. If they were going to be stuck inside for the next hour until they could go home, he wasn’t going to waste it and have mounds of homework when he got home. “They can if they call it a school project.  Which, technically, it is.”

“Did I ask for _logic,_ Iwaizumi-san?” Matsukawa had sat himself on the ground next to Hanamaki, who was scrolling through his phone with a dead look on his face. Iwaizumi questioned again how they’d gone from tolerating each other to a budding friendship in such a short amount of time, but didn’t find himself complaining about the lack of argument that came with it.

“We’ve been stuck in a basement together for weeks,” Hanamaki muttered, sounding like he wasn’t completely a part of the conversation but was offering his input anyway. “I think the ‘-san’ is a little formal.”

“You’re just impolite and can’t grasp the concept of basic manners. It’s not my fault I’m a gentleman, _Makki-chan._ ”

“I will not hesitate to kill Oikawa in this basement, and if you keep this up you’ll be next.”

“Or,” Iwaizumi grumbled, throwing them a tired look. “You could stop messing around and be quiet so that I can do my homework.”

Hanamaki saluted, looking about as serious as an idiot. He leaned forward to rummage through his bag, pulling out the book that they had to read for history. The basement fell quiet, and it took a stunning total of six minutes for Matsukawa to fall asleep. Iwaizumi wondered again how anyone would be able to sleep so much, especially when he had an hour less of work than the rest of them. Not that he was bitter, anyway.

The silence lasts for another thirty minutes, until Hanamaki snaps his book shut loudly enough that Matsukawa wakes up and Iwaizumi’s concentration on his own homework breaks. They both glare at him, but Hanamaki just slips his book into his backpack, undeterred. There was only fifteen minutes left until they could leave, but Iwaizumi could have written at least half a page in that amount of time, if not a full page.

“Why do you tie your shoes like that?” Matsukawa mumbled, and Iwaizumi glanced over in time to see Hanamaki standing back up, apparently missing some strange way of shoe-tying.

“Because it’s easier. Everyone’s got weird quirks, and that just so happens to be mine.”

“I think you’ve got lots more than that,” Matsukawa argued. “And you’re probably the only one.”

Hanamaki shook his head vehemently, managing to look bored and passionate at the same time. “No, everyone’s got them. You sleep, like, _a lot._ Iwaizumi’s a neat-freak. Oikawa does that weird tally thing.”

“I’m _not_ a neat-freak,” Iwaizumi protested, while Matsukawa said, “what tally thing?”

“You know,” Hanamaki pulled his bag onto his shoulders, checking the clock on his phone. “He keeps all those tallies on his arm. They’re in pen, he probably draws them on every day. There’s always a different number, though. Did you never notice?”

“No? I don’t spend a whole lot of time studying him. Why does he do it?”

“Why does Oikawa do anything?” Hanamaki shrugged.

“I’m not a neat-freak,” Iwaizumi insisted. Matsukawa and Hanamaki sent him twin looks, looking like Cheshire cats who thought they were clever for keeping a secret.

Matsukawa yawned widely, blinking once afterwards. “Sure you are. You organize things alphabetically, you yell at anyone who messes up organization, you won’t step in dirt and you won’t touch it without gloves. And seeing how we’re doing a _gardening project,_ that makes you a neat-freak.”

“That doesn’t mean anything,” Iwaizumi muttered, shoving his hands in his pockets and making his way up the steps ten minutes early.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

They ended up spending the next three days in a similar loop. Hanamaki would spend the first hour being difficult and refusing to do anything except glare at Iwaizumi as if he expected to get stabbed as soon as he turned around. Iwaizumi wasn’t sure how Matsukawa did it, befriending such a jumpy kid, but he’d done it effortlessly. A part of Iwaizumi wondered what would happen if, by some turn of events, they ended up friends. Or, at least, tolerant of each other. But then, what would happen when the end of the project came? Would it really have the intended effect, changing their ‘delinquent ways’ and making them better people? Or would they only end up back in detention. If that was the case, then Iwaizumi would only have succeeded in befriending a lot of boys who spent all their free-time in the history room making up detention hours.

On the fourth day, Hanamaki waltzed in like he was ready to begin his game of watching Iwaizumi like a hawk, and instead sent him a long, tired look and then picked up a bag of soil. He set to work, filling up the still-empty pots and opening seed packets to add in when he was finished. Iwaizumi took what he could get, deciding to call that progress, if only for the sake of the project. Matsukawa arrived and they sat in the corner, Hanamaki putting soil into the pots and Matsukawa adding in the seeds, carefully patting the soil over them like he cared for their wellbeing.

Ever since they’d brought up quirks, Iwaizumi couldn’t help but notice them. The way that Matsukawa treated things gently, like he was afraid to harm them, was a quirk of his. The way that Hanamaki treated new people angrily, and then slowly wore himself down until he couldn’t bring himself to act mad anymore was a quirk. If he wasn’t mad, then he must have been feeling something else. Iwaizumi hadn’t yet figured out just what that was.

The switched the lights off and went home, and Iwaizumi didn’t bother relishing the quietness of the train ride home like he’d done for the past few Oikawa-free days. Things were always worth relishing until they became normal, and then there was no point in enjoying what wasn’t a big deal anymore.

Right away when he got home, he noticed the fact that Oikawa’s curtains were shut and there was a light on behind them. They’d been open for the span of time that he’d been away, and the room had always been dark. Iwaizumi found himself dealing with conflicting emotions towards Oikawa’s return. He didn’t bother telling himself he wasn’t at all pleased with the turn of events, because there’s no point in lying to yourself when your head knows the truth. Why would you lie to yourself, when you’re fully aware that you’re only lying?

So Iwaizumi admitted to himself that yes, he was the slightest bit pleased, and then moved on from it to go inside and do his literature homework.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Even if Iwaizumi was slightly pleased to see Oikawa, Oikawa was not at all pleased to see any of them. He returned in a bitter mood, acting pompous and arrogant like there was no tomorrow, and then slumping down at his desk when he finally wore himself out with his high-and-mighty act. Iwaizumi wasn’t the only one who was well aware of bitter grumpiness radiating off of him. Matsukawa and Hanamaki practiced self-control, trying their best not to antagonize him—if only for their own desire to not know what would happen if they _did_ mess with him when he was in such a bad mood. Whatever he’d spent the last week doing that had meant leaving all of them to work had put him in a terrible mood, and he stared down the wall like it had personally offended him. Iwaizumi really wished he’d get over it, though, because it meant that even though he was back, Iwaizumi was still stuck dealing with Matsukawa and Hanamaki on his own.

While it wasn’t the most desirable situation, Oikawa at least helped out with the potting. The work went faster and happened silently, for once. Oikawa’s miserable mood seemed to hang in the air, effecting all of them. Iwaizumi almost laughed at the fittingness when his phone buzzed to inform him that it had begun to rain. Not that they could hear it from in the basement, but just knowing that it was gloomy and dull outside, too, made the mood even more dreary.

Hinata poked his head down eventually, informing them that he and Kenma would be leaving early to try and escape the worst part of the rain. He had the decency to, at least, inform them that it would probably stop raining in an hour, meaning they wouldn’t have to walk home in it.

Iwaizumi’s phone went of several more times, each time going ignored. The app had an irritating habit of informing him of every little change of weather, and he wasn’t going to get up and wash his hands just to find out the rain had sped up a little. They continued working, Matsukawa and Hanamaki in one corner talking about a video game, and Oikawa and Iwaizumi in another corner ignoring each other blatantly because of Oikawa’s bad mood. He wasn’t _angry_ anymore, but he certainly seemed like he was still dwelling on something, and it wasn’t Iwaizumi’s job to play therapist.

Even though they were in the basement, the thunder from upstairs cracked loudly enough that they all could hear it. It made Hanamaki jump every time, but it kept Matsukawa awake. It wasn’t a problem until a particularly loud clap resonated through the room so loudly that the silence afterwards felt loud. The lights buzzed loudly, different from the regular hum, and then shut off. Being plunged into darkness was less dramatic than it was in movies, when everyone would scramble to panic and figure out what had happened. Instead, they all sat in silence for several long, drawn-out moments while their eyes adjusted to the dark. When they could see (relatively), Oikawa exhaled long and slow.

“Oh my god, he’s asleep,” Hanamaki mumbled from across the room. “How did he _fall asleep_ because of that? How can anyone do that?”

“Is there backup lights here?” Iwaizumi asked, ignoring Hanamaki. “It’s too stormy out to walk home now.”

“Probably…but we’re not going to be able to find anything. This building is huge,” Oikawa stood up, brushing dirt off of his pants. Hanamaki rummaged through his pockets for his phone, turning on the flashlight. The light sliced through the dark and lit up a row of unopened soil bags. Iwaizumi blinked, sliding his eyes away while they adjusted once again. Then he followed Hanamaki’s lead, turning on his own phone’s light “Can we go upstairs where there’s at least windows? It’ll be brighter.”

Hanamaki stood up, nudging Matsukawa awake with his foot. Then he trekked up the stairs boldly, like this was something that happened routinely every day and he was just going through motions, like preparing cereal or walking home. The stairs creaked loudly the entire way up, groaning ominously in the dark. Iwaizumi stood up, hearing dirt fall to the ground and ignoring the sound. It was a nice reprieve from having to work in the basement, but it did mean that they’d have to do more work tomorrow.

Oikawa was right, and it was much brighter upstairs where what little sunlight there was filtered in weakly through the windows. The sky outside was murky, gray and dreary. The clouds churned and poured down rain, which was hitting the roof noisily and coming down quickly, already flooding the grass and streets outside where the gutters weren’t able to keep up with all the rainfall. Iwaizumi shut off his light. “I’m not walking home in that. Better to save phone battery than to have it die in a blackout…”

Hanamaki glanced over at him, seeing to debate doing the same. Without either of the flashlights the room was darker, but they’d be able to survive with just the light coming in through the window. Matsukawa watched out the window with narrowed eyes, shoving his hands into his pocket. “Do you think it’s just a storm? It came out of nowhere.”

“There’s tornado warnings, but not near here,” Oikawa spoke up, looking at his phone screen. “For now, it’s just a blackout and nothing to worry about.”

Hanamaki still seemed jittery, like he was anticipating another loud clap of thunder to scare him at any time. Lightning lit up the sky, lingering for longer than it normally did. It made its way across the entire sky, weaving through the clouds and flooding the room with light temporarily. Iwaizumi tucked his phone away.

“We can at least look around for emergency lights. But…”

“As long as we go in pairs it’ll be fine,” Hanamaki reasoned. “Then if we get lost, we won’t be on our own.” Matsukawa nodded sagely from next to him, pointing down the hall with more windows.

“Right. Makki and I will take that one.”

“Mattsun-chan and Makki-chan, leaving me with Iwa-chan!” Oikawa said, as if that were some kind of offense to him.

“If he comes back without you, I won’t blame him,” Hanamaki replied, sending Oikawa and agitated look. “If it were _me_ you were going with…well, just hope you don’t find any particularly dark hallways.”

“It doesn’t have to be a dark hallway,” Oikawa looked more offended than before. “We’re the only ones here, he can kill me in any hallway.”

“Don’t help plot your own murder,” Iwaizumi muttered, starting down the hallway that Matsukawa hadn’t claimed.

He could hear Matsukawa’s smug grin from halfway down the hall. “Bye, _Iwa-chan!_ ”

Iwaizumi gritted his teeth, rolling his eyes. He could hear Oikawa’s footsteps padding along heavily after him. The hallways were mostly empty, and sounded far-too quiet without the buzzing from the lights. His eyes scanned all the outlets, and he checked inside the rooms lining the hallway. Most of them looked like offices that hadn’t been used in quite some time, empty other than stacks of half-filled-out papers.

There wasn’t a light in any of the rooms, though. At least, not a backup light. Oikawa wasn’t much of a help, seeming not to care if his phone died or not. He played music from his phone and Iwaizumi didn’t bother complaining. The music wasn’t bad—mainstream, if anything, but not bad—and it cancelled out the creepy silence that seemed to echo through the whole building.

They continued their hopeless hunt throughout the building, not finding anything other than a probably-stale bag of marshmallows sitting in the middle of one of the corridors. Oikawa compared it to a horror video game, claiming that if this had been one then they would have had to pick up the marshmallows for energy or something. Iwaizumi told him to pay more attention to the task at hand, ignoring most of what he was saying about the possibility of lighting marshmallows and crayons on fire in a worst-case scenario. At one point or another, he could hear Hanamaki and Matsukawa’s startled yelling from the other side of the building, choosing to ignore it. There _probably_ wasn’t anything that could kill them inside the building, unless they’d knocked over a stack of boxes or something. They couldn’t get hurt sticking a fork in an outlet with the lack of power (they’d probably try that, just to see).

Iwaizumi could hear Oikawa swearing vehemently from behind him when he tripped on something checking his phone after it dinged. “Hanamaki says they’re not dead,” he informed Iwaizumi. “But there is mice.”

“Mice won’t hurt you.”

“Not unless they’re rabid…or **_bloodthirsty mutants._** ”

“Shut up.”

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The longer they tried to find their way through the halls, the more lost they ended up getting. By the time they’d climbed a flight of stairs and wove their way throughout the corridors they ran into Matsukawa and Hanamaki, who looked just as lost as Iwaizumi felt. Disappointment settled in when he saw their equally empty hands; they hadn’t found anything either.

“Nothing?” He asked anyway, because maybe they’d stuffed it in their pockets. They both shook their heads.

“No, just a bunch of empty rooms…it’s starting to storm harder, though. Art we sure there’s nothing in this area? Even really bad storms don’t get like this.” Hanamaki cast a glance behind him, because there weren’t any windows in the hall where they were standing. He tried to pass his look off as a casual glance, but Iwaizumi could tell that he was beginning to grow worried. He didn’t blame him—the storm really did look like it was only growing worse.

“I have a charger in my bag, but there’s nowhere to plug it in.” Matsukawa frowned, bobbing up and down on his toes once as a way to dispel his own anxiety.

Oikawa grinned, and Iwaizumi cut him off before he could add anything. “It probably won’t last that long. If anything, we’ll just walk home, right? We’ll get a little wet, but…”

Hanamaki shook his head. “The wind is really strong. Getting to the station would be practically impossible. I mean, maybe not for a tough guy like me, but you get the point.”

“We take an _apple—,”_

“No. How long is it supposed to last? Does the app say? Either way, blackouts never last that long. We can at least charge out phones if the power comes back on.”

The other boy shrugged. “Yeah, but it never storms this hard either. The app says it’ll last until, like, one tomorrow. We can’t wait that long here, can we?”

“And we put the charger in the _apple—,_ ”

“ _No,_ Oikawa. We’ll just have to wait it out.”

Iwaizumi watched Hanamaki shrugged and thought, not for the first time, that these weren’t the people who he expected to meet when he first landed in detention. If anything, Matsukawa and Hanamaki were less hostile than they’d seemed. Hanamaki, who’d been ready to tear Iwaizumi’s throat out, was something akin to agreeable, at the very least, now. And Oikawa, who Iwaizumi had been sure would be like every other stereotypical druggie out there, only seemed to be filled with useful facts and knowledge that they’d never need and an odd passion for old books and music. Iwaizumi wasn’t even sure he _was_ a druggie anymore.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

They went with Oikawa’s plan in the end. In a giant church with nothing better to do than to wait out a storm that was going to be too long to wait out, there wasn’t much else to do. They went to the kitchen, picking out an apple and laying it on a table. Iwaizumi would have fretted about ruining the charger, but Matsukawa just speared it right into the apple. Iwaizumi waited for them to realize it wouldn’t work, leaning back against the counter. The phone dinged and lit up, and Iwaizumi bit back a swear.

“You’re kidding,” he muttered, glaring at Oikawa like it was a sham.

“It’s called _science_ ,” Oikawa shot back bitterly. “You should try it sometime!”

“Stop arguing,” Matsukawa interrupted them. “We keep getting stuck here together, and it’s not going to be the last time. We’ve got _months_ more of this…so try and get along, maybe.”

“What are you suggesting?” Hanamaki was still studying his phone, like he didn’t entirely believe the whole apple thing either. “We all sit in a circle and share fun facts about ourselves to _bond_?”

Matsukawa looked Iwaizumi in the eye, taking a seat on the ground.

“Spin the bottle. Truth or dare. Paranoia. Zap. It’ll be like fifth grade all over again.” Hanamaki paused, squinting at Matsukawa. “You’re kidding, right?”

“You can’t play zap with four people, stupid,” Matsukawa replied, tugging Hanamaki down with him. Oikawa took a seat heavily next to them, and three pairs of eyes turned to Iwaizumi.

“You can play zap with four people—it would just be a really short game.”

“We’re _not_ doing any of those things,” Iwaizumi muttered, taking a seat on the ground next to the three of them. A loud clap of thunder practically shook the building.

“You’re just scared you’d have to make out with Oikawa. But no, we’re not. Like I said, we’re just going to _bond_.” Matsukawa sounded like he was trying to goad Iwaizumi and agree in the same sentence. Iwaizumi shrugged, leaning back on the palms of his hands. “I’ll go first, because I’m a generous, kind person who’s going to show you how it’s done.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tumblr: Aobajosighs.  
> Follow the tag "#matsuhanaiwaoi detention au" on Tumblr to be notified of changes in update dates, rewrites in chapters, or questions about the story. Thank you~


	4. October 12th-October 17th

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which a night is spent in a creepy kitchen without electricity and Iwaizumi is stressed about quite nearly everything.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is so blah in quality, I'm sorry ;~;  
> I just bought a new laptop, so within the next update or two I'll be able to get back on an every Sunday schedule, and hopefully the quality will improve...  
> [Currently un-beta'ed.]

~ ~ ~ ~ ~C h a p t e r  F o u r ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

~ ~ October 12th-October 17th ~ ~ 

Another loud clap of thunder sounded overhead, and Matsukawa paused for a moment to think about what he was going to say.

“My name is Matsukawa Issei, I’m seventeen, and I attend Aobajohsai high school,” he began formally, like he was introducing himself at a conference rather than in a dark and creepy church basement. “I’m narcoleptic, my favorite color is blue, and my favorite meme is the tag yourself meme.”

“You’re what?” Oikawa had shifted so that he was lying on his stomach rather than sitting up, and Iwaizumi took a a childish moment to relish the fact that he was taller for once.

“Narcoleptic,” Matsukawa said again, looking like he was prepared to have a conversation he’d had hundreds of times and never enjoyed. “I sleep. A lot. I’m always tired, but not like how you get tired. I can _try_ to stay awake, but it won’t work. I don’t have cataplexy, so it’s not like…dangerous? But it’s still tiring, especially in quiet or calm places. That’s why I miss third period and an hour after school. If I sleep for enough time then, I’ll be fine for an hour or two afterwards.

“I mean, I’m still tired—I’m always tired—but not so tired that I can’t stay awake.” Matsukawa probably could have rambled on for a while longer, but chose to nod at Hanamaki instead. “Okay, now you go.”

Hanamaki bit his lip when he thought, seeming to be thinking hard about what he was going to say. The phone on the table lit up with a message, temporarily basking them all in light before plunging them all back into darkness. “I haven’t got anything like that to say, so this won’t be as interesting.” He shrugged, thinking a moment longer before continuing. “Okay, uh, my favorite color is gray, I play volleyball, and…yeah, that’s about it.”

“He draws,” Matsukawa chimed in, leaning back lazily against a wall. “That’s a hobby to share.”

He ignored Hanamaki’s look, leaving over to grab his phone from where it was charging. He typed in a way that fit his personality, slow and careful, sliding his fingers over the screen and placing his phone back down in the same slow movements that seemed to define him. The phone was open to the photos app, showing off a sketch of a bird. The notebook that it was drawn in was lying on a desk, like it had been placed there without much thought and then left for Matsukawa to find a sneak a photo of. The drawing itself was done carefully and colored in with just as much precision. It was colorful—not colored how a real sparrow would have been—with a rust-like color starting at the wings to expand out to the soft purple in the middle. Iwaizumi didn’t know a whole lot about art, but he was fairly sure that must have been more than a hobby. Hanamaki clicked the phone off, still sending Matsukawa a flat look. He shrugged, like he was shrugging the whole subject off, and then pointed to Oikawa. “Your turn, then.”

“Can we ask questions?” Oikawa said, sitting up and leaning back on his palms. “What position do you play?”

“Wing spiker,” Hanamaki pushed the apple and phone out of the middle of the circle, extending his legs out and leaning back on the same wall as Matsukawa. Iwaizumi was the only one still sitting up straight, but didn’t bother to shift. “But it’s not an official team. We don’t do matches or anything. It’s just rec.”

“I’m a setter,” Oikawa’s eyes tended to light up when he grew passionate about something, and his shoulders would lose some of their always-present tension. “I don’t play for the school, obviously, but it’s still a competitive team.”

The way he talked about it made it seem like a casual hobby, but he managed to look passionate enough about the subject that the casualness was overwritten by his evident enthusiasm. The way Oikawa acted—it was the opposite of what most people tended to do. Generally speaking, it was a given to try and act in a way that would make people _like_ you; hide the bad, exaggerate the good. Oikawa tended to do the exact opposite, as if he were trying to convince people that he was something terrible. Iwaizumi may have fallen for all the bravado, too. But Oikawa’s eyes still lit up when he spoke about space, and he still bounced on his toes when he got excited, and he would always pour out history facts that nobody needed to know before he could think to stop himself from doing so. And, of course, he was still a straight A student who got 100% on every test and collected old, dusty books that he piled onto his bookshelf. And _oh, the bookshelf._ Oikawa may have been a convincing badass with a drug addition had it not been for the fact that he had a bookshelf as long as his wall piled messily with books that were falling apart. Old books—most of which were in English—filled the shelves and all the surfaces in Oikawa’s room, including the floor. Iwaizumi wasn’t able to make out a _whole lot_ through what little bit of the curtain was open, but he never missed the _damn books._

Most people wrapped themselves up like presents, putting all the prettiness they could muster on the outside and hiding away things they didn’t want seen on the inside. But when you opened it, all you got was dark desires and selfish greed. And Oikawa, more like an inside-out present, hid the prettiness away on the inside and poured all the disappointment out where everyone could see.

Iwaizumi didn’t have the foggiest idea why.

He looked like a little kid, what with the way that he acted like it was Christmas morning just because Hanamaki brought up volleyball. Iwaizumi had played volleyball when he was little, but he’d never had any reason to stay in it. He’d never really spoken with the other kids, and he’d never been fantastic at it anyway. He’d quit when he’d been about eleven or twelve years old.

Uninterested in the apparently extremely enthusiastic conversation, Iwaizumi stood up. “I’m going to see if the weather’s gotten any better.”

“If it hasn’t we should probably just plan on spending the night…the electricity’s out and the streets are flooded. Can’t say it’d be very smart to even try getting home in this.” Matsukawa unplugged the phone from the makeshift outlet, standing up and stretching. “I’ll come with, though. Maybe there’s something upstairs we can find to bring down here.”

Iwaizumi didn’t argue, pushing open the heavy door to the kitchen. It squealed a loud protest, dragging against the ground and shutting behind them with an overly ominous _clang._ Matsukawa’s feet dragged when he walked.

_You’re going to wear out the soles of your shoes,_ Iwaizumi thought, and then mentally chided himself for sounded like a tired mother. The hallways of the church were weirdly dark, making it feel like midnight even though it was probably only six or seven at night. It was silent without the hum of the old lights and the entire church was sending cold chills up his spine. It made Iwaizumi feel like he was supposed to go around and collect matchboxes, as if it were a horror game that he’d managed to get trapped in. The faces painted on the walls were even creepier staring at him in the darkness. Matsukawa sneezed mutedly next to him.

“Bless you,” Iwaizumi mumbled, sticking his hands in his pockets to fight away the chills creeping up his spine.

“Spooked?” Matsukawa asked, pausing after he said it and contemplating the bearded man staring shiftily at them on the wall. “Yeah…me too.”

“’M not spooked,” Iwaizumi griped. “It’s just _cold._ ”

Matsukawa snorted, glancing out one of the windows that they passed. “That’s very valiant of you. Such a macho man, nothing can scare you. Oh, how I swoon.” 

“Who said I’m trying to make you swoon, dumbass? Jeez, if you wanted to swoon you could have stayed with Hanamaki.”

“He’ll just have to miss me for a little while, I guess. All these adoring fans, don’t have time for all of them, y’know?” He paused, letting his shuffling feet fill the silence. “Yeah, no, I’m still creeped out by all of this. Listen, if we die in this storm I just want you to know that I find you tolerable and that I stole your pen.”

“ _What?_ Why?”

“It was a really good pen and you irritated me a lot? It writes really smoothly.”

“We’re not going to die in the storm and you’re an asshole.”

“So _vulgar,_ Iwaizumi.”

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The storm had only grown worse. Tornado watches had turned into tornado warnings and alerts to stay indoors plagued their phones. Iwaizumi sent a fast text to his mother, unsure if it was able to send or not. Matsukawa stared out the window at the storm, gnawing on his lip absentmindedly while he thought. “There’s blankets and stuff in the offices. I don’t suppose anyone would miss them if we borrowed a couple for the night…most of them are abandoned rooms, anyway. All covered in dust and stuff.”

“Would it kill you to say a whole sentence?” Iwaizumi asked, distracted. He tucked his phone in his pocket, gesturing down one of the dark halls. “Well? Lead the way.”

Matsukawa feigned a bow. “Of course, my liege.”

Iwaizumi rolled his eyes, following the other boy down one of the dark hallways. At some point they must have gone from bloodthirst and thievery to this, whatever _this_ was, but Iwaizumi couldn’t really say at what point that was.

They gathered up wads of blankets from a dusty old office, dragging them along the ground down the unused corridors and down the hall to the kitchen. Iwaizumi was oddly glad to push open the noisy metal door into the kitchen, even if the squeaky groan of a greeting made him wince. Oikawa and Hanamaki had settled into silence, both lying on their stomachs and looking bored. Oikawa made a _tsk_ sound when he saw them, sitting up.

“I was beginning to think I’d won my bet, too.”

“He was _so sure_ you’d stab each other. Or get eaten by rats. Shame that you didn’t.” Hanamaki didn’t sit up, or even bother with glancing over at them, eyes shut and head rested in his arms. The dark was unnerving, and it was making Iwaizumi tired just being in it for so long without regard to what time it was. Matsukawa dropped his pile of blankets on the ground, yawning widely. Iwaizumi yawned just watching him, dropping his own wad of quilts and sheets.

“The storms really that bad?” Oikawa pulled a fluffy blanket out of the pile. “D’ya think they’ll cancel school tomorrow?”

“Dude, no, they’d hold school even if we got hit by a hurricane.” Matsukawa threw a blanket at Hanamaki, who made a muffled noise of protest from under it. Matsukawa took over the rest of his pile of blankets, flopping directly onto them and shutting his eyes, like shifting and getting _under_ the blankets would have been too much effort. Iwaizumi rationed out the second pile, dragging a blanket over himself and laying on top of another. It would be impossible not to feel the concrete ground (unless, of course, he did what Matsukawa had done), so he settled for what he could get and pretended like it was midnight rather than six in the afternoon. He was going to wake up at an ungodly hour tomorrow, but he’d worry about that then, when there was lights and hopefully less of a storm outside.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Iwaizumi was sore practically _everywhere_ and the kitchen lacked any windows to let in light. Reflecting a little bit, it may have been a smarter move to sleep in the basement. But they weren’t dead and the building was intact, so Iwaizumi supposed it was fine. Matsukawa slept with his face buried in the blankets, making Iwaizumi worried that he’d suffocated in his sleep, and Oikawa slept with his nose scrunched up like he was deep in thought. Hanamaki had disappeared over the course of the night, or maybe a very selective tornado had come through and spared them all, picking only the weakest of the bunch (or maybe the strongest, depending on the cause and the tornado’s motives).

Judging by the rummaging from the next room over, though, Iwaizumi thought it was safe to assume Hanamaki was just looking for food. Iwaizumi stood up, stretching out his sore muscles. He didn’t hear rain anymore, but that didn’t mean there _wasn’t_ any.

Trying to open the door as quietly as possible (a challenging feat), Iwaizumi walked down the hall towards the atrium. He’d taken off his shoes last night before he’d gone to bed, but Iwaizumi regretted it when he felt the cold of the concrete seeping into his feet and chilling his toes. Light peeked through the corridor up ahead, and Iwaizumi felt relief flood through him like a depraved child. He’d only spent a handful of hours in the dark yesterday, tops, but it had been a creepy, dark, cold experience that Iwaizumi would rather be done with forever.

Rain spattered down on the sidewalk still, but it was a lighter rain than yesterday. Light managed to filter through the drizzle and the wind was minimal.  But the damage from the previous night was evident. Broken branches littered the ground and the water that flooded the streets was still sluggishly draining away. It looked like a mess outside. If they’d had any hope of getting the outdoor half of the project done in a month before, they certainly didn’t now.

Footsteps padded down the hallway behind him. “Is it better out yet? D’ya think there’s school today?”

“Well, no matter what we’ve missed it by now.” Iwaizumi checked his phone, realizing that they’d somehow managed to sleep nearly twelve hours. The events of the prior day must have been more tiring than he’d realized. “The lights aren’t back on yet, anyway. I don’t think they’d have school right now with the streets how they are. Did Hanamaki find anything edible?”

Oikawa shrugged, hair ruffled and sweater rumpled. “Nothin’ grandiose. But definitely edible stuff.” With his hair the way that it was, it looked less like an intimidating undercut and more like a casual haircut. The piercings lost their edgy effect when he yawned and scrunched his nose in the way that he tended to do so. Oikawa’s eyes were brown. _Really_ brown.

“Mm,” Iwaizumi turned away from the windows. “Without the electricity back on, it’s probably smartest to stay out here where there’s lights. We can grab the food and come back here.”

“You don’t like the dark,” a tiny smirk played out on Oikawa’s lips.

“I’m not scared of the dark.” Iwaizumi shot him a flat look. “I just spent a whole night in it, stupid.”

“I never said you were _afraid,_ ” Oikawa scoffed. “You just don’t like it.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t like you either. But it looks like I’ll put up with both.”

Oikawa was quiet for a moment, trailing behind him, and Iwaizumi wondered if he’d finally managed to get Oikawa to shut up for once. “Well, you like me better than the dark!”

Iwaizumi groaned, padding along down the hallway and plunging himself back into darkness. “Yes, fine, I’ll take you over another night like that one any day.”

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

When the drizzle outside stopped, Matsukawa deemed it safe to make their attempts to get back home. Whether or not they’d be able to take the train, Iwaizumi wasn’t sure. But he also supposed they’d never know if they didn’t at least try walking to the stations to find out.

Iwaizumi slipped his shoes back on, pocketed a granola bar and folded up the blankets that they’d slept on the night before. Oikawa hovered by the door, apparently waiting. Hanamaki and Matsukawa, who managed to look tired even after sleeping for so long, had set off on their own route home in the complete opposite direction already. Oikawa wrapped a scarf around his neck, messing with the tassels on the end absentmindedly.

Iwaizumi slipped his backpack over his shoulder, giving the room a once-over before he followed Oikawa out, like he was leaving a hotel room rather than the church where he’d been trapped for the past ten hours.

Oikawa jabbered on about some space movie while they walked to the train station, having apparently fixed his hair and un-rumpled his clothes. Iwaizumi half-listened, only giving it _that_ much attention because Oikawa would probably bring it up in a day or two and would expect Iwaizumi to reply to him adequately.

(Since when he Iwaizumi care whether or not he answered Oikawa correctly?)

At some point the conversation changed from an alien movie to the possibility of _real_ aliens, and Iwaizumi took that as his cue to stop listening and/or caring if he aggravated Oikawa by doing so.

Oikawa quieted down on the train, slipping in his earbuds and leaning back in his seat to look out the window. Iwaizumi relished the precious moments of silence, turning his own head to stare out the window. He’d only been gone a couple of hours, but with all the events that had happened in that time, he really couldn’t wait to finally get back home. Not to mention, the sooner he got home the sooner he could put the no-school day to good use rather than spending it in a spooky old church. Tiredness from oversleeping tugged as his eyes while he watched the buildings and tunnels flash by.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

They walked home on the same side of the sidewalk. Maybe it was because the half that Iwaizumi usually walked on was completely flooded and covered in broken tree branches, but he’d ended up walking on Oikawa’s half. In his mind he’d always imagined something like this ending with bloodshed, but they only walked in silence. Oikawa had turned his music down for once, leaving Iwaizumi to listen to the gurgling sounds of the gutters trying to collect the massive amounts of water. He realized several blocks down the sidewalk that Oikawa wasn’t even playing music, just walking with his earbuds in, which, to Iwaizumi anyway, seemed pretty pointless with all things considered.

“Where were you that whole week you were gone?” Iwaizumi didn’t bother glancing over at Oikawa. He wasn’t even sure if the other boy was going to answer.

Oikawa hummed, sounding uninterested. “All that sharing from last night wasn’t enough?”

“Well, _you_ didn’t share anything.” They stopped at a light and Iwaizumi watched Oikawa kick a pebble around. His face looked bored and noncommittal; the whole conversation was probably more of a hassle than anything else for him.

He shrugged, walking when the light switched to _go._ “I was visiting my aunt.”

“In the middle of a school week? It would have been nice to have a little warning ahead of time, y’know.”

“Yeah, well, something came up. I’d rather have been stuck working on that dumb project, anyway.” Oikawa’s eyebrows furrowed when he was frustrated. Iwaizumi took the safe route and quit while he was ahead, changing the subject.

“Why didn’t you just play volleyball for the school?”

“Iwa-chan’s suddenly very interested in me! I’ve gotta warn you, I don’t kiss on the first date.” Oikawa shot him an insufferable grin, and Iwaizumi glowered at him.

“Shut up.”

They walked in silence for a stretch of time, crossing over the rickety little bridge that would take them to their neighborhood. The wood always creaked under his feet, and Iwaizumi remembered being little and fearing the bridge more than anything else. He’d always run across it, drawing in a long breath beforehand. The worst that could have ever happened would have been the bridge breaking, and even then it would have been a two foot drop into water barely up to his knees. He had never developed a fondness for the bridge.

“It’d be kinda hard to play for a school team with detention all the time,” Oikawa said, breaking the silence by answering the question from earlier.

“Then you could have just stopped getting detentions.”

“It’s not that easy, Iwa-chan,” Oikawa replied, voice crisp and soft. But the grin had lingered and he walked with his shoulders relaxed back and his hands stuffed into his pockets.

“You could have done a lot through a school team.”

“And I can do a lot through the varsity team I’m on now.”

Iwaizumi scoffed lightly, glad when his feet his the ground on the other end of the bridge. He was surprised it had held up through the storm. “I still don’t see why you’d get intentionally caught all the time if you knew it’d land you in detention. You don’t even _do_ drugs, do you? All you had to do was not be stupid and you could have—,”

“Shut up. It’s not that easy.” There wasn’t any anger in Oikawa’s voice, and he managed to make it sound calm and light even though there was a hint of irritation behind the words that would have made Iwaizumi stop talking if he’d been sane.

“You’re not denying it.”

Oikawa looked at him with anger in his eyes. “I’m not saying you’re wrong. But you don’t know anything _about_ me, so don’t try and pretend like you do.”

“I just don’t get it,” Iwaizumi pushed on, not caring if his own voice sounded calm or not. “It’s a stupid thing to do.”

“You’re not perfect either! Stop. Just _stop._ You’re not perfect, I’m not perfect, the world isn’t perfect. Nothing’s even _remotely perfect,_ but you try and make the world all good and pure, as if _you’re_ good or pure. I’ve got news for you; the world isn’t ever going to be what you want it to be. It’s not going to, so just give up!” Oikawa’s knuckles were white and clenched tightly. His eyebrows were furrowed and he breathed out an angry little puff of air.

Iwaizumi pushed onwards.

“If you just give up it’s never _going_ to be anything. What you’re doing now isn’t going to get you anywhere you want to be.”

“You don’t know where I want to be,” Oikawa seethed. “I don’t _care_ where I am now. You don’t get it, do you?  You don’t get it and you never will. Look at you; you’re a perfect student and a perfect son, one of those picture-perfect prodigy children. And look at me, look at me the way that you’re meant to look at me, look at everything you’ve seen, and then look me in the eyes and tell me we’re the same.” He paused, stopping where he was on the sidewalk. “We’re not the same, but we both ended up in the same place with the same punishment, didn’t we? I think that says a lot about the world.”

Oikawa started walking again, but he looked tired and his feet were close to dragging. “I’m done talking about this.”

The obnoxiously loud music started playing, and Oikawa left Iwaizumi to trail behind him in silence.

_“It must be all the smoke,”_ he’d said before. _“You don’t get it, do you? You don’t get it and you never will,”_ he’d said now. Iwaizumi wondered what exactly it was all supposed to mean. Were they supposed to mean the same thing? Oikawa obscured everything. He made everything so much more complicated than it needed to be. He spoke like an oracle, twisting his words into riddles that Iwaizumi could never decode. He didn’t know why he wanted to decode them, anyway. He didn’t know why he _cared_ if he understood Oikawa or not.

He didn’t understand him. Iwaizumi didn’t have the foggiest idea what Oikawa was thinking at any given time.

Oikawa didn’t bother with a goodbye when they reached their houses, just turned and walked up his steps. Iwaizumi didn’t glance his way, turning to cross the street to his own house. He didn’t know if he _wanted_ to understand Oikawa.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Iwaizumi’s neighborhood didn’t have power for another two days, and they didn’t have to go to school for another three. All things considered, even that was probably a little bit over the top. Regardless, Iwaizumi relished the fact that he could just sit around at home and not have to deal with anybody. He would have liked to say that he took advantage of the free time to finish his homework or wrap up and essay, but in reality he spent most of it under at least ten blankets on his bed watching some low-quality show on Netflix.

His phone pinged with unread messages from his desk, but he didn’t bother getting up to check them. They were probably from Yahaba or Kuroo, either about the situation involving the apparently ‘cute’ new kid or some matter which was probably incredibly entertaining to Kuroo and would prove to be unamusing to Iwaizumi. He’d realized, as of several days ago, that he had a terrible choice in friends. Or maybe not so much a _bad choice_ in friends, so much as terrible luck when it came to the people he met.

Iwaizumi had probably watched fifteen episodes of the dumb show he was hooked on by the time that he actually drug himself out of bed to try and be productive. Grabbing his phone off his desk and a set of clothes to change into, Iwaizumi rubbed the tiredness out of his eyes and set off to take a shower.

**From:** Kuroo

_Are you going to the festival? It’s in your town this year I think_

**From:** Yahaba

_I asked Kyoutani to go to the festival and he said yes???_

**From:** Yahaba

_But he thinks we’re going with *other* people too_

**From:** Yahaba

_I’m screwed?? What do I say_

**From:** Oikawa

_Can we just forget about all of that_

**From:** Oikawa

_We don’t have to be friends but I don’t want to fight either_

**From:** Oikawa

_Or like not forget just like_

**From:** Oikawa

_Be done with it_

**From:** Oikawa

_Or whatever_

Iwaizumi shut his phone off, opting to dwell on the messages while he showered rather than reply right away.

The steam woke him up and the hot water turned his skin an angry shade of red. The mirrors fogged up and distorted everything in the reflection. Iwaizumi had long since decided all those things only made it easier to think.

Iwaizumi was glad that, at the very least, all three were easy to answer. It was easier to try and figure out what to say than to try and figure out how to finish a garden in time, or how to handle having to spend hours a day with people who he couldn’t seem to get along with.

It would take a little longer than one shower to figure out the bigger problems, but Iwaizumi had settled on a resolution for the smaller problems by the time he was done rubbing shampoo into his hair. It may have been slightly sneaky, but it would handle three of his problems—potentially _four_ —all in one go. First of all, Kuroo would pester him endlessly if he didn’t agree to go to the festival that they went to every year. It wasn’t a _big_ festival, but most schools held some kind of event there. Kuroo always had to go with his volleyball club, and tended to drag Iwaizumi along. Second of all, Iwaizumi could easily be _busy all of the sudden_ and _accidently_ leave Yahaba and Kyoutani together somewhere ( _oh now, how’d that happen???_ ). And, of course, if Iwaizumi wanted to even get along a little well with Oikawa, this could be the perfect opportunity to at least make an effort towards a…friendship? Acquaintanceship.

The festival had always been boring, anyway. Worst case scenario, he’d only spiced things up a little. Best case scenario, Kuroo wouldn’t pester him, Yahaba would stop having to pine over his crush, and he’d gain an acquaintance or two.

Iwaizumi toweled off, tugging on a clean t-shirt and jeans and grabbing his phone from the counter.

 

**To:** Kuroo

_I’ll be there._

**To:** Yahaba

_Just go with Kuroo and I. It won’t be weird then._

**To:** Oikawa

_That’s fine with me. Are you going to the festival next week, by any chance…?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tumblr: Aobajosighs  
> The education festival is a festival that takes place once a year in certain districts. They always had it in Sasebo, but I'm not sure about the Miyagi prefecture? Well, either way we're pretending they have it. Hopefully Iwa-chan will be able to pull this whole thing off~~~   
> I'd love to hear your thoughts so far, so feel free to tell me down below!

**Author's Note:**

> Tumblr: Aobajosighs || haikyuu writing and art blog ||  
> My ask box is open to send prompts and/or ideas for this story~. Feel free to tell me what you thought of the first chapter down in the comments.


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